We tapped away at stories in the park, and danced with random children at a dad-rock concert in the plaza, and sat on hard benches set too far apart for good talking, and tried to make friends with these other writers we met just days ago. We lived a dream through Iowa City summer nights, and frozen yogurt kept our hands cold.
And now our two weeks are up. The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio watched dusk fall while receiving our diplomas; now Caroline, Josh, and I split quick from Writer’s Prom. We wave goodbye to the program director as one of the Popular Poets (PPs) is about to sing some angsty song she wrote; tossing a few snaps behind us, the elevator-doors close and we three are off together once more for one final frozen yogurt.
Yotopia Frozen Yogurt is the centerpiece of our little trio. Most days, after writing sessions and readings, our minds thought-ripe, we walk into the wide breath of Iowa nighttime, down through the brutal blocks of campus buildings and into the quiet city. Fireflies—the first Caroline’s seen—brighten the grass. The sky seems low enough to grasp, humidity without suffocation. Into this scene neon-flashes Yotopia. The baby’s-nursery-yellow walls blur as we whir to the wrapping bank of flavors. Spouts peek down: at the pull of a handle there emerges thick cold creamy tubes of wild blackberry, vanilla custard, cake batter, chocolate, espresso, original tart, tropical sorbet, or pink lemonade. We have tried them all. Tonight I get espresso, Caroline vanilla custard, and Josh a swirl of three. We pile on chocolate squares and sprinkles, and place each on the scale and, for the last time, pay. My voice pitches up and coughs when I thank the cashier. And we go sit on those far-apart benches outside.
This was not our first meeting-place, but Yotopia is where we kept returning, five days a week, for the slightly too-large cup of cold for our hands to enwrap. We usually need the coolant: jokes crackle off between us, a ring of fire requiring the sweet solvent of froyo. For the first time, each of us have found kindred minds outside of home, minds in fact more kindred than those we know at school.
But now we sit quietly. It is a bizarre thing to be seventeen years old and feel your goodbye may last forever. We do not yet know the night will crack open soon, that we will not stop laughing until 3:00am when we crash from exhausted delirium into sleep, together, in that little study room we love. We do not know we will spend the next year video-calling weekly. We do not know these friendships will last. All we know is that we now hold these tubs of frozen yogurt, and little melty drops fall onto the pavement-stones as our minds, thought-ripe, reach for what to say.
An Editor-in-Chief, 2025-2026.
