what
makes us
human.

i held my breath, hoping you wouldn’t notice the vastness of this gift. i leaned into your joy as if it were my own. i couldn’t help but watch the distance grow in your eyes. and then you glanced at me dismissive of the weight i’ve placed on your shoulders. this happiness, a burden you carry so tenderly, a love i’ve folded into your hands, but a quiet trespass of my needs. and i question the signs, when your lips sew shut, when your eyes drift away, when your laughter falters just a breath, if you’ve begun to feel the heaviness of being loved a bit too much.

it’s been a while. i have grown in ways i couldn’t comprehend. i no longer confuse pain with proof, nor growth with punishment. i remember what i did. who i was. they forgave me. i watched them let go and i couldn’t follow. i am allowed to begin. they already said so. i just haven’t believed it. the scar stays. but it is no longer my name. i will not carry a life sentence for a moment everyone else has already outlived.

she counts the seconds at every red light. eighteen, always eighteen. the radio plays music she almost recognizes. her hands at ten and two. a green sign. it says wichita. she opens the same three websites in the same order. her login expired again. she resets it. the coffee machine chokes at seven, at one, at four. someone’s birthday in the break room. she signs the card. her mouse clicks one hundred, two hundred, three hundred times. going home the light is still eighteen seconds. the sign for wichita again. the radio plays the same almost recognizable song. tomorrow she’ll reset the password. the light will still be eighteen seconds. and she’ll count them.

imagine yourself. you wake to the smell of the earth breathing, to the morning sun spilling honey over the ridges you don’t know the names of. your fingers brush against the petals of a flower in an endless field. and you realize, it does not belong to anyone. the gusts of wind carry stories to your ears, warm and insistent, begging you to hear them. you understand that the world will go on. whether you notice or not. you take a step. your feet meet grass, dirt, stones. textures from rain and wear, fire and snow. you feel the pulse of a world older than fear. but the knot composed of your obligations tells yourself to be quiet. but your eyes, they have been waiting for this violent eruption of color. the way the shade bends and stretches over the valleys, the soft sway of the leaves nudged by the tiniest hint of wind. you take a deep breath. and maybe for the first time, it crosses your mind that this place is ready to be noticed.

i am not a bitter audience. at least i try not to be. i am genuinely glad your heart is full. glad something in this world has found its place in you. this is the cruelest technicality of being human. i can praise your bountiful harvest, without an ounce of food on my own plate. it is like watching rain. the evidence is everywhere. and the sound is so beautiful. gutters overflow, the asphalt shines under streetlights, the smell, intoxicating. and i’m stuck in the patch where it does not fall. in this hurricane of euphoria, i remain dry. i stand an inch away from the downpour, skeptical if a drop would ever touch my skin.

blackened grass forgets the sun. surrounding trees are tall, the walls too high, and the warmth never arrives. it drinks what spills through gaps, detecting ricochets of light. slowly moving to what it knows, in name alone. the wind moves, the rain falls. swaying underneath, sipping from the pour. it weeps salt of its own, like a fox caught in a snare. worn to the bone, with nowhere left to turn. fattening its desire to break through the abyss. knowing the light could burn, wanting it all the same.

there is a traffic jam in my brain and every car is lit from the inside. the headlights point at questions that don’t have mouths. it comes around enough, this sentimental invertebrate. but it keeps changing its name by the time i want to say it. do i not know anything or do i know too many things? twenty corridors here, with twenty more around the corner. and every door leading to twenty more. i feel things in chapters but can only muster dirty captions. my chest swells with monologues but when i open my mouth, nothing but warm vapor escapes. i wish emotions were like furniture. pointing at where i want it to go, moving it out as i wish. how am i supposed to translate a language that forms beautifully in the dark but dissolves in daylight? how am i supposed to explain a color that doesn’t exist in any visible spectrum but stains all that i touch? no. should i leave it alone? can i grasp the anatomy of my rumination without needing a scalpel to dissect it? i’d consider the fact that it sounds like there’s nothing flowing through my head. like the pause is vacant. or that searching for the right words looks like not having them at all. but it’s not empty in here, i promise. thoughts fold over thoughts, feelings interrupt each other, meanings form halfway, then retreat. i’m still learning. one day, i’ll hold it long enough, so you can see it too.

the rules were written in another tongue, in ink that dries while i am still bleeding. i observe them pass the plate too far to reach, then they ask why i’m not eating. i want to tear the world apart. let the resentment scream where they’ve been cheated. to make a sound loud enough that deafness grasps the meaning. my anger lives in clenches before the fist swings. it builds cathedrals from the ash of every time i swallowed the heat. a tongue too scorched for speaking. when the stained glass fractures, and vaulted ribs gag from smoke, the ash remembers a fire. a fire that takes and blisters stone.

you flip a coin and it always lands on heads. you get the green light, over and over again. you pour a shot, labeled “despair”. you take it down whole, and just can’t seem to care. or maybe you do. and it’s all just a lie. maybe you long to be free of this decay, you can’t deny. you see catastrophe down the road, an obscurity of the entirety of you. you know where you’re headed, a windy path down, but you don’t know what to do. a vice you can’t escape, a grip so tight it aches. the addiction of authority blurs the things at stake. you tend to your spirits, only one kind comes to mind. barely feeding the other, letting it fall behind. you know it’s there, even if you don’t say it aloud. the path keeps bending forward, and the air feels strangely loud.

i was on top of the world, intoxicated by its allure. the earth offered itself to me like a confession. i became the space between sky and ground. every corner, every cloud tailoring the sky. my eyes could not carry an entire horizon spilling over at once. i felt the size of the incomprehensible. then the miles folded back. a familiar exit. the key found the lock as it has always known. the world has no idea what i had just come from. and by morning, neither would i.

the stage is set but there is no audience. everlasting, flowing, growing, changing, in the blink of an eye. yet an eternity, the play lasts. each scene ending in chaos and rebirth like a phoenix. a phoenix aimlessly flying through the cosmos waiting to be done with the lesson of resilience, and start with spagetification. breathe. review your playbook. just to learn mother doesn’t know what rules are. her mecurial intellect has spilled into the chaotic endless paradise. as the paint stains the canvas, the darkness fills with a sense of wonder and magic that transcends the blood of a thousand generations.

brighter days, easier breaths, softer ways. life was a song i knew by heart, every note in order before the fall apart. but trust slipped, and the needle tripped. damaged grooves, the melody stripped. the rhythm halts, and silence takes its place. just a spinning record in an empty space. waiting for a song it will never find, playing out a ghost of a better time.

i paved the way for two directions inside the same heart. one promised roots, the other, feathers. i can’t figure out which part of me is asking to be saved, and which wishes to be free. each step betrayed me to the life i might have had if i had turned back. but i was not made to stand at the crossroads forever. what i cannot choose, time will choose for me. and i will learn to love the life that finds me.

i walk beside them, but we never meet. the ground beneath us feels like different streets. their eyes meet eyes that will never find mine. we share the same space but never intertwine. the laughter rises, falls, and fades away. i am the ghost among them every day. what fills their hearts leaves mine completely bare. we stand together, but we’re not all there. the night will end, they’ll leave without a thought. i was among them, but i was not.

i had my own reasons. they sounded right when i said them out loud. you stood where i promised i would be. i wasn’t cruel. maybe that would’ve been easier. cruelty has edges. this was softer. slower. the version of me you believed in couldn’t make it on time. and the look you gave me, said everything you didn’t. i remember once you said to me, “don’t let me down.” you laughed when you said it, but your hands were shaking. i told myself there was time. i missed it. not by a lot, but enough. the door slammed shut on my face, without me inside it. now you’ve set the table, the same way it’s always been set. only this time there’s one less seat. and i don’t know if it’s empty because i’m gone, or because you are.

every disaster you mapped out in your head, how many came? you’re going through this graveyard and everywhere you look, you see headstones of what might have happened. whatever scared you either came unannounced or not at all. either way, you were not ready. so why do you pull your hair? worry is not wisdom. you’ve been afraid long enough to know it changes nothing.

they roam the world, like glass, unfogged and unbroken. they name sorrow a weakness. call distance, dignity. but grief is not failure. to weep is to witness. to kneel at the feet of what cannot be saved and still offer your empty hands. i have seen the dry-eyed stare through beauty, hollowed out of wonder. seen them touch the edge of mourning as if it were shame. but i have carried mercy in my soul like a wound, soaked in the ruins of what mattered, and said “yes,” “i saw it fall.” and i did not look away.

i walk far enough into the world that it stops having opinions about me. the terrain raised on all sides, stones stacked against the sky. the breeze threaded my hair, chest open like a mustang without a fence to trap me in. the ground changed. an accident of green amid miles of indifference. shoes off, grass between my toes, standing in the middle of something that had no reason to be there, and neither did i. the air must have known me by name, the way it emptied me out and somehow left me more full than i’d ever been.

the song drops. my foot slams the gas. the road opened up. two lanes pitch black and the city peeling away - it must have known i was coming. i don’t check the speed. i don’t need to. i can feel it in my teeth. street lights drag into golden wires and curves wonder why i never brake. it feels like instinct. bass rattles my bones but i’m in unshakeable control. dozens of lights ahead become problems i solve before i even get close. a truck fills my lane, left closing fast. clutch in, drop two gears, the engine’s going feral. i take it the exact moment it vanished. the road is mine. every lane, every gap, every mile. the needle and my pulse racing each other. next time, i’ll go faster.

lost in the swell of a thousand eyes that look through you. in a sea of enormous commotion, you become smaller. just another noise passing through. then your name. a rope thrown down. you spin around fast, a compass finding north, rushing to the voice of a face that doesn’t blur. to the only face in the flood that knows you are real. you’ve been found.

look down with pity in my troubled state. i drown in a sea of woe. my weeping eyes hardly hold the weight as tears of anguish overflow. both my flesh and spirit wither fast, consumed by heaviest grief that pulls me down. i wonder how much longer i can last, while my heart cries and frowns. my days are cut short by endless gloom and regret has stripped away my might. i waste away and edge toward my tomb. save me and bring me back to what’s right.

i built a home. a house with bricked up windows holds its faith in flickers of golden light. to shield the toll of endless strife, my soul lies barren, devoid of flight. my skin turns pale, my warmth lags behind. my words become stale, not a kindness you’ll find. with every tear, my spirit hides. lost in the infinite, consuming nights. though scars may ache and memories sting, seek the healing that devastation brings. through the trials faced, a heart learns to mend, light slipping past gaps, where broken hearts blend.

what plays on repeat in the haze of a terribly average day, a thickness chokes the air and i’m wheezing, going astray. nobody told me that moving would feel like returning. i’m right back to where i started, the same old ache, consistently burning. i don’t think it’ll leave me. or that i’d let go. i hope you stopped fighting. i hope where you are, there is no more trying. if i could reach you, what would you say first? tell me “happy birthday”? the words you saved? or something raw and true, “i could not stay, i’m sorry, i know how much that hurts you.” i want to say “don’t go”, but we’ve run out of time. the place where you’ve gone, is it too high to climb? one day i’ll reach you when my path ends. and you’ll see what i made of the time that you spent. believing in something you could not stay for, i’ll live it so loudly it’ll break down the door.

i’m not afraid to die. all the days i’m free from thoughts of death, must prove it. or is that exactly what being afraid sounds like? car crash, slow disease. choking on my breakfast in my dirty pajamas. aneurysm while with friends. in my sleep, if i’m lucky. screaming, if i’m not. i analyze the possibilities and i know this test can only be taken once. my heartbeat is a little too loud tonight. beating a little too fast. is it always this irregular? this pain in my chest, it might just be heartburn or the start of knowing what’s coming. what will it be like in the moment? will i have time to understand it? will there be pain? how much? for how long? will i be alone? i’m not afraid there’s an end. i’m afraid that it’s already written in stone. the year, the place, the method even. every day i’m getting closer to it without any way to prepare myself. it could be anything i can or can’t imagine. today or fifty years from now. it could be gentle or it could be agonizing. i’m afraid i won’t see it coming. and i’m afraid i will.

i chiseled my house with my own two hands, then locked myself outside. every wall up was a guarantee to keep the chaos at bay. and i’m standing in the weeds at a faceless time, gazing at my creation. the blueprint dissolves in my pocket. rain soaks the collar that i straightened. the hinges of my planning squeal in the weather. what i built to steady myself leans, curious about collapsing. i pursue the tools that are no longer here. my mind drafts repairs for storms miles away. the weeds will move without instructions. the rain will not consult me. my breathing persists, even without supervision. my house will stand or it won’t. i take a step back and let it. i surrender.

the starved, the broken, the saddened, the betrayed, the full, the fulfilled, the unburdened, the exempt the starved feast on deficiency. their hunger a dialect the satisfied cannot speak. the broken know the magnitude of light through refractions, becoming something else entirely. the saddened have mapped every inch of themselves. their grief is cartography. the betrayed, architects of trust, seen its schematics fail. the full, they choke on plenty. their abundance a thickness in the throat. the fulfilled, running past the edge of satisfaction, hands stretched out wide trying to grab more. the unburdened, floating untethered, spared from the gravity that holds the rest of us down. the exempt remain untouchable. shielded by systems made to absolve them. their purity is purchased. they are not required to understand what the starved have tasted, what the broken have become, what the saddened have discovered, what the betrayed have learned. what was stripped from them was the making of them. those who never lost anything, lost everything.

i woke up one day already behind. and it never let up. every achievement swallowed whole before it landed, and every milestone was just the floor of the next expectation. i have been quietly agonizing in the direction of their comfort. amputated parts of myself that complicated their vision. grain by grain. until the person i was became sediment beneath the person they wanted. and that is the brutality of it. it doesn’t announce itself. it sure hasn’t to me. i complied for so long that compliance became my personality. and i can’t find the disparity between who i am and who i became to survive them. i have my own life to live. my own expectations to meet. i don’t want to keep playing a role in a show to a character i know i could be better than.

i packed my things before i cried, and cried before i drove. i left behind what kept me tied to everything i know. the road ahead said nothing much. the mirror said too much. i’m not the kind to lose my touch but i’m losing it as such. i’ll be someone new by june, or possibly even sooner. but i’ll sing slightly different lyrics, i hope i sing it truer. they’ll say i’m being brave. that i’ve grown. they’ll swear it’s better this way. but the separation of any home leaves woe where there it stays. it’s not that i don’t love you. it’s not that this is wrong. some things just ask you to begin again before the courage is gone. and that’s truly, the saddest part. not that i chose to go, but that i loved you with my whole heart and it told me so.

i’m about to stroll out empty handed. swinging my arms loose, i have nothing to hide. i’m the perfect civilian. but wait. my strides are turning performative. a casual half nod to absolutely nothing, eyes locked onto an imaginary interesting spot a few feet ahead. the officer stays glued to his phone, which somehow feels like accusation. i’ve never radiated more guilt than when i’m completely clean. aren’t i signaling innocence with my exaggerated normal steps? i passed the sensors. the beep stays muted. that would only make sense. but i still kind of expected sirens.

we all see you. see what you show. your smile illuminates spirits yet deals yourself a heavy blow. we all see you. but not all of us the same. some see the smile, some see the strain. smiling but sad. sad but still smiling. do you know your truest ache is known? that you don’t have to bear what was never yours alone? we hold what you won’t speak. being seen by those who love you isn’t the same as being weak. we know that there’s a soreness in being your own keeper. the longer you hold this mask up, the lonelier it’ll get, and deeper. we know laying it down is terrifying. we know the weight has settled in by now. but we’re not asking for everything. just show us where it hurts, and how. i know it keeps you up at night. i know trust doesn’t come for free. but what if the one you’re looking for was always somebody like me. don’t be afraid to hurt. there’s a mercy in yielding. all you’ve been concealing, is worth more than all the shielding. even the heaviest skies eventually find ground. it’s okay to fall down. we’ll still be around.

i made too much again. you’re not here.

we were never as careful as we pretended. running light, loving all the way. we kept pulling back, waiting for the right moment. it never showed up. let it be reckless. let it be raw. let it be everything. always too much. always not enough. yet, we’re still reaching for it. because we know holding back is pointless.

their absence has rewritten my life’s direction. i try to navigate rooms they no longer occupy, move through time like someone swimming against the current. i replay conversations that will never continue. inventing words i should have said, building arguments with a ghost, apologizing to someone who cannot hear. they reach for me. those who love me. and sometimes i cannot find the door to let them in. sometimes i do. sometimes i want to but can’t. sometimes only their presence keeps me tethered. how was i supposed to explain that their presence was drowning me? that their presence reminded me of absence? that i was afraid, and also terrified of being alone?

my stupid heart, turning doorways into alters, leaving space beside me for a love that may never come. how wretched, how restless it is, beating for a future it cannot see, loving in absense. in silence. and all i do is wait, an old fool in a tower built on maybes, clutching at ghosts of a love not promised nor denied. how unwise, my stupid heart, beating like a bird against a glass sky, mistaking the open air for a cage, mistaking the cage for a home.

there is a place. where light loses its tongue. where the dust drifts endlessly like prayers without a god. the floorboards don’t remember names. the walls don’t wait for you. it’s been known, that the muffle lasts longer than your voice. even the shadows here refuse to follow, and the dark has better places to be. and maybe that’s all it ever was. not the absence of people, but the absence of being needed by anything at all.

i am thinking about thinking. watching myself watch. a conversation interrupted by dialogues i had four years ago. i rack it. i return to it. then i rack it again. my mind constructs courtrooms for the innocent. rehearses grief for losses immaterialized. writes the eulogy when nobody is gone. and i know. i can see the whole machine. every gear, every wire. but seeing it is just another part. i used to think awareness was the cure. that if i could give it a name, i could set it down. and somehow, even knowing that this is just what it means to be someone who feels everything twice, makes me feel uncertain still.

the strong back owes the heavy stone. the steady hand owes the fragile bone. to hoard a strength you will not use, is the damage that you choose.

we repaint the past in warm colors it never wore. we hum a song we never learned. nostalgia’s gentle lie, smoothing the rough edges, filling the cracks with golden lacquer until even the pain looks holy. do we wish to believe we were so content with our lives that we search for comfort in misshapen memories?

i think it starts with noticing. the way a writer crosses out the truest line and then puts it back. the way a composer writes the melody around the one note they couldn’t get out of their head. the way a sculptor runs a thumb across the clay and feels the difference between what it is and what it wants to be. nobody handed it to you. you just kept coming back to the only place that made sense of the rest. the stubborn, absolute refusal to let the moment pass unnamed. something in you just can’t stop itself from turning back around, kneeling down, and looking closer. a stranger’s laugh in the parking lot. the way misery sits different on a tuesday than a sunday. the second cup of coffee, the one you didn’t need and why you poured it anyway. everything left a mark on you. you just could never stop noticing where. and i think that changes you. the way slow things do. closer to your own, present inside it.

two aliens sitting above the atmosphere. watching the world spin from inside their ship. the first taps the glass and bites his lip. “i don’t really get them.” he sighed. “they know their bodies will die. yet they stack up stone and build massive monuments and water their legacies. i see them writing down songs and stories. they litter their futures with what they call fame. i wonder if it’s just their way of saying ‘i was alive’.” the second shifted in his chair. his three pupils widening, fixed on the blue planet. “and that’s not all. it gets much weirder.” he grumbled. “they’ll find a gorgeous thing and watch it smoke. they show fierce adoration for the oceans and the valleys, then tear it to the ground and let it die. they’ll pull a lover close and promise many things, then break their hearts and push them away. it seems to be a pattern to destroy what you love.” “and look at this.” the first shook his head. “this guy is thrilled, but both of his eyes are red. why is he crying if he isn’t sad?” “because” the second said, “it drives them mad. their hearts are way too small for what they feel, so joy spills out in tears as proof that they’re real.” “they build sanctuaries out of the very ground that is waiting to bury them.” the first murmured. “they carve their names into trees that will rot, and speak of ‘always” into ears that will go deaf. it’s a madness isn’t it? to pour so much love and devotion into the things that are certain to collapse.” the first pressed his face against the cold glass. “there.” the first muttered. “that one is standing on the edge of a large coastal cliff. doesn’t he know that he can fall?” “yes.” “and he still climbed?” “yes.” “why?” “some of them believe that safety isn’t the same thing as living. they fear the idea of only surviving their days, and surviving the fall makes the fall feel like a gift. they know that anything capable of exalting them is just as capable of breaking them. and that’s the bravest thing i’ve ever seen.” the first leaned closer. his ears twitching. “do you hear that? i just mentioned it. i can hear a story being told right now!” “doesn’t this count as lying? why are they doing this to themselves? what’s the point?” the second replied, “the truth of their world isn’t enough. magic comes out of their mouths to make reality a little more bearable. i think to a point, they need them.” “need them for what?” “to practice wanting. to practice losing. to imagine justice where there is none, mercy where there is little, endings kinder than the ones they were given, things to bring hope and wishes.” “so it’s kind of like an escape?” the first asked. “no. a kind of endurance.” A pause filled the air. And they sat in the sparkles of flaring city lights. “i’m glad we’re immortal. we’re not fragile like they are. we never decay or grow ill. we don’t have to grieve. how lucky we are to be safe from all that wreckage!” “we are safe. but we are safe because we are ghosts.” the second whispered. “when you live forever like we do, you don’t ever have to decide what matters. we hoard centuries. they pile up just like the dust in empty, forgotten rooms. but i can count their heartbeats with my fingers. they pay for every single choice they have and will ever make. every tower they raise, every promise they break, all the beautiful things they conceive is purchased with time from their vanishing lives. we will outlast the stars, but they are the only ones who understand the tremendous cost of meaning something.”

my guilt spits acid and disfigures my soul. i am still but not settled. evil has come for me. these acts i’ve committed, treason against those who had no reason to doubt. my eyes never close. my heart never sleeps. i dwell in this hell that i have regretfully reaped. my words cannot carry atonement, my actions fall short of any reconciliation. two nights pass. two months. then two years. fresh and never left. apologies rehearsed collapse before they hit the air. i have not moved the way i used to. time does not seem to remember how to heal.

they wanted me smaller. muted. grateful for the scraps. spite isn’t a pretty fuel. it doesn’t burn clean. but it burns nonetheless. something unyielding lives inside. every gate they locked, i used a window. and loudly. they will not have the satisfaction of watching me diminish. i take up the space they subtracted. say the thing they wanted me to bury. built shrines from what they thought was rubble. i’ve won. not because i have much, but because the point was never leaving.

held between the boundless i crave and the solitude that holds me, i am suspended. gently chaotic and achingly alive. just waiting, desperate to become everything, afraid of becoming nothing.

my mother was at the stove, sleeves up, hair tied back, hand over the other to wait for the boil. the pot was a small one. it was the only one. at the store she had put back the second cut of meat, the bag of mushrooms, a bottle of wine she paused at. all i saw was the kitchen smell. i saw the steam fog the window. i saw the bowl draw closer to me, and i saw her sit. and i saw her watch me eat. i ate. i told her it was good. she said good. she did not eat first. the plate she fixed for herself was a smaller one, and i never saw her finish it. she fed me what she did not have.

should i call it coping? it sounds better than giving up. i started calling it fate when it was just repetition with better excuses. i’ve learned to nod at things i’ve once bled over. to sit through storms with my coat already off. this isn’t peace. this isn’t what i wanted. but my name is on that thin black line. i’ve signed it in lowercase and dated by habit. exhaustion got the best of me. and i let it keep me.

maybe asking myself if i’m good isn’t the right question. maybe the real one is, “why does it matter what’s underneath it?” i keep growing hesitant, trying to find the selfish part, the hidden motive, the flaw that explains it all. and maybe it’s there. maybe every kind word is just self preservation. maybe i do it to feel clean. but the deed is already done. i’ve already helped someone get up. given without counting. something still passed between us that wouldn’t have if i had let my doubt devour me. i think about people who never question this at all. who give without looking, who never need to see what it’s made of. and i wonder if the questioning is its own kind of caring. proof of wanting it, not of goodness. i can’t be conceited about something i’m this unsure of. at least that’s what i tell myself. perhaps that’s the answer. hiding in the argument itself, that asking means i haven’t stopped trying to deserve an answer. i’ll do it anyway. even if i have not yet figured it out, because i can.

today did what today does. some of it settled harshly, a lot of slid by, most of it kept going. you don’t have to gather every falling string and tie them into something that makes sense before you let it go. you can leave the mess exactly where it fell. no one is standing over your shoulder waiting for you to decipher the day. so let the replay button have a rest. you are here. another day, you have carried yourself through. the loose ends have no claim on your tomorrows.

there’s a city of beginnings at my feet. i collect the first hours. the smell of unopened paint, the posture in the chair before i sit. i am heavy with intention. my hands know the balance of tools still clean. the garden planned outgrows the garden planted. i water diagrams, speak to blueprints like they could come to life. i rehearse the life i will not live. staying where everything is about to happen. the finished task is a small death. no longer the painter of infinite paintings, but the painter of this one. even still, why won’t i move into forever from the hour before? i’ve built a boat that will not set sail. maybe the shore was my destination all along.

so there i am, at a place other than my own, and the toilet won’t flush. just keeps spinning, that lazy cyclone. we are just two failures, two guests, locked in a seemingly eternal dance. it’s a porcelain prophecy of my degredation, a fate that feels like i shouldn’t leave this bathroom alive. i flush again. obviously. praying that the third time’s the charm. i’m waiting for a cleanse of my mess. the water climbs. and i age seven years. i look around. no plunger. why would there be a plunger? that would imply a merciful god. i sit on those tiles and close my eyes. outside, they’re probably wondering where i’ve gone. inside, i’m wondering whether i can fit through the window. my hope is meeting its end. i hear a knock at the door. they ask me, “are you okay in there?” “i am not okay in here.”

there is something without a shape, a stillness not quite still. it slips between the cracks of my thoughts and bends the mornings will. i reach for light, but taste the dusk. i breathe but not with ease. a stranger sits behind my eyes and will not speak or leave. like music from the room next door, it’s simply undefined. like words that slip from my own tongue or dreams you can’t rewind. and when you ask me what it is, what shadow haunts my day, i can only shrug and softly say, “it must have lost its name.”

thursday again. i hear her voice bleeding through the drywall. sharp at first, then a plead, then nothing. a hard thud against the wall swivels my head. remote in hand, i turn the volume up to flood the place with stupid laughing tracks instead. “it’s not my business.” this morning she passed me in the hall, concealer failing to hide the bruising, eyes lowered. i nodded hello like i always do. now that same laugh track repeats in my head, but i doubt anyone’s laughing anymore. i reach for the remote again. then it hits me. my silence wasn’t neutral at all. it was the loudest choice i’ve made all week.

i loosened slowly, like a thread slipping from the hem of a dress. the shape still intact after it began to tear. i drank in solitude in sips so small, no one noticed how long i’d been thirsty. i disappeared in the spaces between replies, where no one thinks to look. by morning there was no seam to mend. only the fabric remembering what it once was.

i don’t know which key it was. only that this piano undid something structural. this wasn’t sadness. sadness i know. my body overrode every composure i swear i owned. my eyes streamed with tears and my heart carried the weight of many lifetimes. i couldn’t even name what i lost in that moment, or if i lost anything. but it came at me at an angle and caught me off guard. alone, saudade rests in its place. filling the blank, heavy in space. made aware that somewhere in me, there is a room without a lock. and the music knows where it is.

we sat at the brink of glassy lakes, watching the ripples whisper secrets that only reflections could hear. no laughter broke the surface. didn’t need to speak to prove we existed. we spoke in glances that held memories, each exhale trembling the stillness. and maybe we understood, for a moment, that reflections aren’t about clarity, but recognition. and as we rose to leave, the water held our silhouettes just a little longer, as if to remind us that even unspoken things leave gentle marks upon the surface.

for years i sang it straight, “throw my hand on a plane for ya.” just the words as i heard them. i hit the “plane” hard every time. PLANE. like it was the most obvious thing. it was unfathomable for it to be any other word. bruno was most definitely asking for total commitment. i heard the passion in his voice. so i gave it as loud as i could too. in the car, at red lights, passengers silent around me. then the lyrics appeared, “throw my hand on a blade for ya.” blade. not plane. blade. the silence in my head was deafening. i’d even go so far as to say i was distraught. every emphasized "plane" replayed now as me volunteering for a very literal stabbing. the “plane” version stuck with me longer than it had any right to. how embarassing…

the world has built us in silos, wrapped in the static of our own noise, just lonely satellites in the dark. we lock ourselves in our own skin, our own language. but then, there’s a collision. and it’s an awakening. it’s the way the joke hits the air and we both catch it at the same time, a sudden, explosive burst of jubilation that shatters the “stranger” between us. within the brief moment, we are stripped of the titles we worked so hard to keep. there is a terrifying intimacy in it. looking into the eyes of someone you’ve never met and seeing your own humanity staring back, asking, “did you feel it too?” we are stitched together for a minute by a shared cognition of the absurdity of being alive. we are no longer strangers, simply because the timing was right. isn’t it electrifying? how quickly the universe collapsed the chasm. how we were once just unknowns who forgot to exchange names.

it starts as a spark, a twitch between my eyes. i feel a jab in my rib and i’m waiting for the world to blink askew. then i’m honing sentences before anyone speaks. my hands find tension and they fold before i think. i see myself reacting. hear the sharpening of my voice, and i hate the way it fills the room. how quickly i become someone i have to apologize for. i’m not proud of this part of me. but i’ve stopped pretending it’s the whole story. some days, i meet it with gentler hands. other days, i try again.

not too long ago, we were weightless, spinning in smoke lit rooms, always chasing the high, listening to music that splintered. we called them vices but they felt like lifelines. it pulled us to the edge of the dark, and i’m still figuring out whether it was a thrill, a fall, or maybe just a place where nothing hurt for a little while. and i don’t know if we were ever meant to stay or if we were always meant to burn out before we knew we’d even caught fire. were we saving ourselves or losing ourselves?

oh my, the cold. the best kind. the kind that makes me pull the blanket up chin high and snuggle and squirm and paddle my feet, then kick it off because i want to feel it again. i put the kettle on and stood there just to watch it whine, which i never do. the window is all sky today. somebody’s dog is losing its mind over whatever is in the grass and i do love that dog. i love the grass. i love whoever thought to invent standing in a kitchen in november in socks. the coffee is too good. i audibly approve. nobody hears it. that’s totally fine. actually, that’s perfect. bliss like this doesn’t need an audience. it just needs a cup, the cold, and the window wide open showing me how little it takes.

an old man planted a tree in the last year of his life. he never told anyone who he was. never left a note to read. but he did leave a tree. you were there, standing in its shade. you called it a good day. it was. and it is.

i memorized the way you breathe, when something hurts you before you decide not to say it. i love you the way you love a thing you’re afraid of losing. which means sometimes i wrap my arms around you before i notice you need air. i’m learning the difference. there are moments i lie awake cataloguing all the ways i made my love your problem. how this need for you to be okay, is my need. i don’t know how to want good things for you without wanting to be a part of them. but i keep showing up even when i don’t know what to do with myself. i have to believe that counts for something. you are the person i call when the world goes quiet in all the wrong ways. you answer. and i don’t know if i deserve that. --- i passed a woman who was crying and didn’t want help. so i kept walking. there was this sense of restraint and respect, leaving someone to their own grief. and i think about them all the time. the ones carrying things i can’t see. the ones tired in ways i simply can’t understand. there’s a part of me that reaches towards them without asking why. but it isn’t pity. that’s all i know. pity would look down. this looks across. i know what it is to be a person. i know how much that costs. my strides create distance but my heart is still there, with her, and my door’s still open.

i have dreamed of letting go, turned it over, read it clean. examined every argument for the mercy in between. and yet my hands won’t open. not from hatred or from spite. but forgiving means surrendering the only verdict left to write. it never asks the one who wronged. only asks the one who bled. costs everything from those who carry, nothing from the ones who fled. to forgive is to stand in court and argue for the other side. to call my own wound inadmissible, to let the truth be tried. they teach forgive and you’ll be free. but freedom means you have to lose the hurt that told you who you’d be. and one day without warning, my hands will just release. i have not yet found the answer. but i really needed peace.

what am i trying to prove? i tell them about the new project i finished, another thing started from nothing, the thing i stayed up until three every morning to get right. i hear them say they’re proud. sometimes it sounds supportive even. but it lands flat, like a script they don’t believe in. i can feel the difference between someone who believes i am going somewhere and someone who’s just being nice about the fact i’m not. their friends get to gloat about their kids. acceptance letters and full rides and big campuses. i can just imagine the look on their faces when my name’s the only one that doesn’t get passed around the table like good news. i decided to go down this path. i know it doesn’t look impressive yet. no trophies, no headlines. i feel like the kid who’s trying his best and still falling short. but i can’t ever stop. quitting would validate their doubts. so i’d rather die tired than die proving them right.

the speak to kill the void, never considering the price i pay to hold the silence. they touch my shoulder like knocking on a bolted door, leaving when it won’t yield. they’ll call it pretend if pain doesn’t cry out. they’ll call it fake if joy doesn’t dance. i am not what they see. but who would search for a fire in a house that hasn’t burned?

he was talking about something so unbelievably forgettable. slightly funny but not really. my brain, traitor that it is, flashed instead to that one time my cousin tried to suck up to a cop after we got pulled over and he responded, “why don’t you just be quiet.” i almost died laughing right then and there. tried hiding behind my palm like that ever helps. he paused. grin on his face as wide as ever. started laughing too. this guy… deep and delighted because his story totally landed so hard it broke me. the audacity! i couldn’t say what was really on my mind. i was forced to let him bask in this undeserved glory while the real hero was probably policing somewhere in the middle of oregon.

i put my headphones on and the rest of the day went soft. each were working on something they’d been turning for weeks, none knowing what the others were doing. i’m standing inside a convergence of separate urgencies. they move within their own orbits, living unseen narratives like letters in their pockets. everything is effort, but none of it feels strained. they are all building lives in increments. shift by shift and thought by thought. each act purposed to something beyond this room. we aren’t fragments waiting to be assembled. we are each a whole tension. want and fatigue, hope and habit. an entire quilt of our tenacity.

i sat with my daughter once on a porch that no longer exists. said something which is now a blur, but she laughed so hard her whole body folded. i kissed someone in 1977 who i never saw again. a woman i met at a bus stop, who told me i looked like someone she missed. that is what i keep. who cares about the promotions? what importance did the riches i slaved over really have? many years i gave to anger. and many years i gave to goodness. but i wish i sat longer at the tables i rushed from. i wish i said yes to the trip my brother planned the summer before he became ill. when the world asks you to build something, you build it. and you fulfill it. you’ll understand one day that it wasn’t what was built that holds the value. it’s about who sat across from you while you were building. i am old now. my knees crumble before my will does. my hot chocolate’s getting cold while i stare outside the glass panes. there’s nothing in particular but there’s everything there. who should i have been? what could i have done? why was i so afraid? if you ask me what i would change, i don’t think i can make a list. i’d just say i confused living with responsibility. i don’t know where it went sideways. i had dreams that couldn’t wait to leave my chest. i fed them excuses instead of hours. i told them next year, until next year was this year, and then the next. but those ordinary moments. i miss them. i moved over too quickly onto something i don’t think i truly wanted.

i mistook the gaze for gravity. believed the way you looked at me could keep me from falling. i begged for presence like it was permanence. thought being seen meant being held. i measured my worth in moments you noticed, calling these fragments a foundation. but mirrors can’t hold me. and shadows don’t stay.

you got the thing. i smiled for you. i meant it, mostly. that’s the part that keeps me up. how genuine it was, how fast it soured on the drive home. i replayed your face. i could tell you didn’t even know how much i wanted it. the way it just landed on you like it was always yours. it might’ve been. somehow, that’s worse.