They call me Staci.
I knew this girl once. She was really awesome and somehow our time together was often brutally intense. And then I went on an adventure. It was an unmitigated adventure, but still took pause to think about her while eating at a whole foods in Denver, or Austin or Phoenix or while trying to find one in Alamogordo, Park City or Winnemucca. And then I came back. And then she was gone. 
Two seasons later, while at the Senior Prom, I get a text from a number I had long since deleted, imagine my surprise when I figured out who it was from. Two scenes later, with a “gate’s good!” still echoing off the marble bank walls, I dashed out into the rain to meet her.
And now she’s back. Her hair is darker. I really really, really really like it. I didnt remember her eyes as big as they really are. It was the first time we walked under an umbrella together. I had never seen her in a winter jacket before.
In the twenty minutes of catch up you can do before you have to go back to work, it was revealed that she’s gone in five weeks. Graduating, moving, you know the routine.
Perhaps the best kind of merriment is that time capsule supercharged kind of madness that can only occur in limited engagements. These moments, its seems, are the best ones to remember, judging by the order I remember things in… The people involved in the limited engagement circus are the ones that always kinda enrich life in the most unique and delightful ways. I have some awesome people in my act, but its always sad when the circus leaves town…