I wanted to know what the blue lollipop tasted like. I remember the sounds of the wrapper and the way Juliette Binoche crunched through the candy shards as she sat on an old mattress in front of a fire. I didn’t know you could do that with movies.

I think Jesse Wrench Auditorium was full as I looked for a seat, but maybe I was only self conscious that I was going to a movie for the first time by myself. I saw the flyer for Trois Couleurs: Bleu on some A&S building bulletin board and decided to go even though I didn’t know anything about it. I was a freshman and wanted to be arty. Arty people definitely went to French films. I found a seat in the darkness and watched.

Julie spitting out a mouthful of pills into her hand in the sanatorium. Julie running her knuckles against the sharp stone wall cutting them horribly as she left the giant manse she shared with her dead husband and dead child. Julie accidentally getting locked out of her apartment in her pajamas and trying to sleep on the staircase. Julie swimming in the echoey indoor pool at night with the aqua glow from underwater lights. The punctuating throbs of the score reminding her the composition would not leave her alone until it was finished.

I was dazed as I walked out of the auditorium. The meniscus of feeling quivering at my mind’s rim. I walked slowly through the dark back to my dorm, trying to keep every drop of it with me.