I returned bleary from a red eye flight straight into the arms of dozens of college friends at our school reunion this weekend. No matter how many times I visit campus in-between big events, there is something alchemical about being in the same place with the same cohort of people who knew one another so deeply at 18, when we were all just beginning to become. 

When these ingredients combine, I feel that I am visiting with the most essential aspects of my own self – the parts that are hard to see sometimes, what with the rest of life all layered up on top.

Dear ones, may we greet ourselves arriving at our own doors.

May we love again the stranger who was ourself.

May we feast on our lives.

Love After Love, Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.