AB fall ~2022~

they say the end is coming 

everyone's up to something 

i find myself running home to you 

sweet somethings 

you're in the shower singing 

i'm sitting next to you

 

sweet somethings 

how could you want anything else 

lemons ohs, crusty bread, 

and honeyed nothings 

we got it all 

to breathe and be alive 

laughing till our lungs hurt

sleeping next to each other 

accidentally touching and holding 

so that we forget 

about the sorrow and the sadness

whew 

we made it 

more than 80 hours of bliss 

and unfiltered nothings 

somethings 

knowing looks

and silent communications

i think you're the friend i've always wanted 

 

gorgeous, isn't it 

to see a sunset through your eyes 

to wonder what you're thinking 

to breathe the same goddamn breathe 

i watch here 

the trees sway 

and the birds swing 

and i feel like i should be crying 

but i'm too tired 

and you're too fucking beautiful 

i've made up everything about

myself to be someone for you

we have things to teach each other

things that are true and carry meaning 

you didn't notice did you 

that i was always the puppetmaster 

your ivy league education didn't teach you 

to look out for the ones who watch 

i'll keep giving you my weekends 

and every free moment 

i'll craft us a world where you can be what 

i want you to be 

in every world, i'm what you need 

a shapeshifter

a girl with no face or name 

the sun will set 

i'll look into your eyes 

and behold such a gorgeous fucking moment 

another one to AB

My thoughts haven't been my own for quite sometime. I think of you most moments. I plot and plan what I will text you, how I can find opportunities to steal time away with you. I don't want you though, not in that way. This is different. I just want the chance to want you and to watch you. I don't want to be apart of it. I wish it wasn't like this. I now understand when people say that my life was so much better before I met you. Because it was. I was finally on a trajectory where I would be my own person. Now, I'm back to the shadows. To feeling bad for my space and apologetic for living in the body I inhabit. 

Another attempt at clarity. This week I've struggled to breathe more than others. Air is not filling my lungs in the seamless way it once was. Now it fights its way in and prematurely rushes out.  

Truthfully, underneath it all, there is no logical reason as to why I feel this suffocated. Medication? Parental problems? Coping with the liminality of it all? Who is to say. So we'll go to bed and wake up tomorrow just to stare at the face of not knowing. 

AB

So, unlike all of my previous other posts. This is no poem. This is an attempt for clarity of the chaos and the fomo and the "Beautiful world, where are you?" lost feelings that I've been consumed by. (For example, I am staring at the old woman who walks her older chubbier slower cavalier. I've watched her in the fall, in the cold, in the ice, in the melting spring, and now at dusk amongst the pink clouds. Time has passed! I've grown older! This has been hard, but I've been moving through it. Time is moving. People are moving. I am changing. Why can't I be sentimental? Why can't I let this image catch my breath? I used to cry at the prospect that a woman cared for her dog, that used to shatter my spine, just like seeing confetti on the ground of penn's campus after graduation).

This is the eve of my 26th birthday. And that even feels like a lie at this point. Lines are blurry and I struggle to know which version out of the ones I've made up is the real one. What I know is—there are some people who I feel I need to be a different person around. Those who will not accept me. So, I ask myself, "who would they want to be friends with?" And I try to become that. It doesn't hurt to shapeshift. It doesn't hurt to make things up. What is painful is knowing that that friendship was over the second I made that up. Now, the only way forward is to create distance. 

I have been spending an increasing amount of time with Andrew and I've made up this whole other person. More than ever before. To give myself the benefit of the doubt, I think this version of me might be kind of true. I think I like girls and I think I want to pursue them, but I also know I've had true crushes on men. I know that I have a wild side. I've repressed it and haven't acted on it, but why have I spent every minute away from him planning stories of what I'm going to tell him. Why do I keep making shit up? Making things stickier? WHy why why?

I don't want to be like this. But this is some autonomic thought pattern I feel powerless to. 

I've identified that he's insecure too. He is lonely potentially. He isn't the coolest person around. 

Going into my 26th year. I owe it to myself to challenge that. To show up. To face rejection. I don't deserve to keep going around in circles. I deserve to understand and clarify. But, man is he in my head. 

air sucking scorpion

we don't have to hate each other you know?

we both know it's too late 

it's 2 am and you're walking ahead with your new me 

i don't envy her 

in fact i thank god 

i start to call your name 

and i stop 

she'll have to listen to your stories 

and struggle for oxygen in every room you share 

she'll have to agree with you despite her beliefs

she'll have to hold her tongue so many times 

that she swallows it 

she won't know her own name after spending a week with you 

sometimes we clicked

but mostly i avoided you 

every minute i spent recovering from the time i spent with you 

expanding my lungs 

and saving oxygen 

it hurts to move on 

it hurts to feel alone 

patience is the only prescription 

languishing is only languishing if you're languished 

depression is only depression if you're depressed

so wait 

and wait

and wait 

you might die waiting 

but at least you won't die from lack of oxygen