lethe

I tried to find inspiration in anything, in the way blood dripped absentmindedly down my thumb, how I kept picking an unintentional, self-inflicted wound. I drive back and forth every week, and I try to find something beautiful in the sights I am too used to seeing. I glanced at the sign, two differing arrows, "Shopping center" to the left, "Cemetery" to the right, as if the two could be easily confused. I let words flow from my fingertips last night with the viscosity of honey and with identical sweetness. I store these words and thoughts and feelings of melancholy love, waiting for the time to let it all pour out. This hibernation is supposed to provide safety, but I can still feel a few cracks spread across my heart. I tried to find inspiration in anything, especially you.

I want to wake up early, or no, better yet -- I want to stay up all night and leave before the morning sun peaks, sneaking out in the quiet hush of dawn washing over my suburb. We'll sneak out and make our own adventure, covering miles of highway and weaving through the mountains until we break free and make it to the city, just in time for the early morning sun to reflect off the side of the skyscrapers, taking in the blessing of the day's glow. I'll pull over at that one spot, the detour we took last time, and there we can take a glimpse at the urban village perched on the still, crystalline water. We could weave through the labyrinthine streets downtown, straying away from the neon lights and heavily littered sidewalks. Instead, the obscure corner cafés will be our sanctuaries and with caffeine occupying our veins we will be unstoppable. I want to go to that one bridge, too famous to bother mentioning, but still beautiful enough to take up space in my camera's me...

I wanted to kill myself that day. But instead, I went to a park. I photographed a garden of flowers, I loomed over the edge of the bridge, I looked at the rapids and waterfall below. When I was finished with that, I glanced right up to the smiling trees and realized there was a reason for everything.

People are dying on the daily, children are dying on the daily. And I am worried for my safety. We are the generation that will change this.

"How do you feel about her?" She asks me from across the room, and I giggle in my drunken daze. "I don't know, how do you feel about her?" I draw out the question, avoiding my inevitable answer. I can't avoid it for long, after all, she has to be asking me this for a reason. She smiles, "Well, she's my friend," "Sooooo, she's my friend, too," I stall. I look at you, knowing full too well what is coming next, "But is she your friend? Or your friend ?" She replies. "Like... she's my friend... but I'd just be so down if she were down..." I bite my lip to hold back the rest of the reasons I am attracted to her. We're so alike and we acknowledge together. We both love the stars and have the app that identifies the constellations and she laughs at my bad jokes and we click so unexpectedly well, so much better than I've clicked with anyone in awhile. Tonight at dinner she started laughing and smi...

I wrote so many lines about you, and after all this time I realized you didn't deserve a single goddamn word.

I would've still been upset if you told me, but I wouldn't have been nearly as upset if you would've just told me the truth.

You don't know what it is like when death is creeping in the corner. The Grim Reaper was patiently waiting, and we were trying to ward him off. He didn't need to be there, he wasn't invited anyway. It started off as fun, it always does, doesn't it? It was fun until it wasn't. It was a lot of things. But above all, it was not my fault.

"What would you wish for if you saw a shooting star?" I imagined a star streaking across the sky, leaving a celestial trail of light. If wishes had character limits, I would be screwed. Because I know exactly what I would wish for. I'd wish for you and me to be equally in love forever, for the rest of our lives. I'd wish for us to live in the city in a little brownstone with a dog, I'd even let you pick the breed. I'd wish for us to have our dream jobs and more than enough money to keep us afloat since I never want us to worry. But money wouldn't matter to me as long as I would have you. Nothing would, honestly. I'd wish for mornings spent making coffee and tea, with kisses on the cheek as I breezed out the door to catch the subway headed uptown. I'd wish to walk into my office every day filled with creative inspiration, ready to read and write and edit and be happy doing all of it. I'd wish to be living my dreams. I'd wish to c...

"Who did you love last?" She asked me. So I answered, "Myself."

"can I stand next to you?" with a hand around my waist. unfamiliar songs and uncoordinated dancing. candy bracelets laced with berry lipstick. hoop earrings left on a heater. rum and coke poured into a mason jar. glow sticks littering the floor. cuddling on another one's bed. his hand laced with mine. multiple kisses on the cheek. a peck on the lips wouldn't hurt. either from him or from her. this might hurt in the morning, but not as much as it hurts right now.

I’m thinking about you in our city, too.

If you're still writing about it, it still matters. I still matter. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Do you ever have a lonely hour? The hour in which, whether it be day or night, it feels like you're the only soul awake and alive and here ? Right now it's the hour where paranoia races through my bloodstream, instilling fear at every creak and croak naturally occurring. It is the hour where late-night nostalgia wraps itself around me, its hand gripping my neck and holding me down, forcing me to feel. Photos from a disposable camera, beautiful in their flaws and lack of focus, in the streaks of light whisping across them. They feel like they were taken in an entirely different life and if only I could transport myself into those photos just to feel the fleeting seconds of the camera's capturing. I feel weak and vulnerable and sad and I hate admitting the need for someone to hold me and whisper into the top of my head that everything will be okay, even if I do not believe it.  Right now I want you here with me, even if that is not possible for this lonely hour.

I just want to walk down a crowded, sun drenched city street, a leash in one hand, and yours in the other.

All of my muses have become tangled together in a giant web, a conglomeration of string that created the most beautiful craft gone wrong. I strung them in the sky, my constellation jewels, some shining brighter than the others. Yet they all shine bright enough to me; bright enough to let me pick up the pen and let their luminescence pour out like liquid brilliance. I'll keep grasping the pen until the lights go out.

It's 5 pm both here and somewhere else. The sky is the same shade as my faded heart. We pack up our belongings and begin to retreat. Toes sink into the hot sand, arms loaded with beach chairs and towels, chests reddened from the lively sun, tangled hair sprinkled with sea salt, sweat soaking our skin, sunglasses perched on the top of our noses doused in sunscreen. Our bodies collapse onto comfortable beds, still damp from the day's lounging in sun and sand, our laughter bubbles around the hotel room. The days here feel like seconds and I wish I could live in each passing second forever. I want to stay here - where the palm trees kiss the wind, the ocean is only an elevator ride and a few steps away, and my friends are by my side staring into the sorbet sunset - forever.

I wish I could turn off my thoughts, maybe activate "Do Not Disturb" on my brain's emotional passageways, make an abrupt halt to the constant, racing traffic zooming through the tunnels and roads and bridges leading to you. Thoughts of you keep circling around, in an orbit, so cyclical and so addicting. My thoughts of you tug at the strings to my puppet heart, sending it swaying and thumping with every feeling. I miss you, but you're not mine, and it's been awhile but time hasn't helped with my acceptance of it. I could acknowledge the past as much as I want and look forward to the future with hope and an open mind, but it won't change anything... it never does. The thing is, I don't want to wait for ten years down the line, living in a different city, complete strangers by then. I don't want to wait until we're both adults with real jobs and real lives and maybe even families. I hate the notion of "Right person, wrong time" and I...

I don't know when I became so fascinated with maps. I never imagined myself pulling up the maps app on my phone in my spare time, yet here I am -- tracing roads and running my finger over lakes near and far. My routes always lead somewhere else, always lead somewhere meaningful. Before I know it, I'm connecting dots to a location I haven't visited in years, perfectly re-routing my brain back into that moment, within a second with no additional travel time, I'm right back there. My walks down memory lane often start like this nowadays and that's when I began to realize that maps are just another concrete reminder of the past; a placeholder for memories I could store nowhere else, except for the exact location they were lived in. I'll continue to follow these maps, all in hopes they'll lead me back to myself.

I have written and erased far too many texts to one person. So many deleted texted written specifically to you, filled with all of the words I am too afraid to say aloud.

I looked in the mirror and still could not see myself.

I wish our lightning bolt kiss was an entire thunderstorm.

I thought cancer would teach me something, perhaps something useful. But so far, all it's taught me is how to hide my emotions, how to pretend reality isn't reality at all, how to build the largest dam to keep my tears from spilling over. I sat on the side of the road for an hour, waiting for my knight in shining armor to come to my rescue, and within this hour, my sea of thoughts caused waves to crash on my insides. I realized that my moments where I need saving will not always be resolved by him. Once I was whisked away - always the damsel, always in distress - I stepped into my palace to find that my thoughts were true. That this could be the last time something like this happens; that this could be one of the last memories of him that I'm left with for the rest of my life. She tries to be positive, to believe in the "signs" and her past experience. Maybe the only thing cancer has taught me is the thin line between hopeful and hopeless and just how much I ...