Then comes the heart of it

On the mystery, delirium, and simple domesticity of living life in awaitance // evelynwan.substack.com

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“It’s the season I often mistake / Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds” -Ada Limón

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A Day Is Vast by Jane Hirshfield

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-Extracted from #2 Waiting to start, Evelyn’s Substack

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-Extracted from #1 Waiting for summer, Evelyn’s Substack

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If summer is meant to follow on the heels of spring, then today she is taking a sabbatical, skipping stones and counting petals under the shadow of spring’s withdrawal. Today, she lives slowly, holding sheaths of grain as she naps in the arms of oaken shade, oblivious to the demands of the buzzing bees and the unflowered meadows.

-Extracted from #1 Waiting for summer, Evelyn’s Substack

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"Have you ever ventured into the land of The Wait? It’s a place that blooms with color and potential and dizzying chaos. Where time moves differently, fate spins straw into gold, and emotions are more perishable than morning dew."

-Extracted from New Series: The Wait, Evelyn’s Substack

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"In between what you want and what you get, resides a place where you’ve lived out your most daring, dispiriting, and starry-eyed dreams. A place where all your longing breathes, sleeps, and pulsates with life." -Extracted from New Series: The Wait, Evelyn’s Substack

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I’m in a state of sleepy delirium now. Time has slowed to a trickle and I am lulled by the faint, steady rhythm of chopping and the breezy coolness of spring across my cheek.

Extracted from On dumplings, periods cramps & moms, Evelyn’s Substack 

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Extracted from On layoffs & new routines, Evelyn’s Substack 

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“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could”

-Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

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Trying to tame rage by tiptoeing around it is like trying to seek love in a whorehouse.

Extracted from “On Longing”, Evelyn’s Substack

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Extracted from “On Longing”, Evelyn’s Substack

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Extracted from “On Longing”, Evelyn’s Substack

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"There’s a tenderness in thinking that surely, one day, when all this passes, I’ll find myself looking back to this moment when you were all that I could think about."

Extracted from “On Longing”, Evelyn’s Substack 

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"What's the point of loving stars if they only come out at night?"

-evergreenquill 

Extracted from “Tomorrow night I’ll tell you” 

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"And perhaps now, more than ever, we find ourselves tempted to retreat into worlds of our own creation, so disenchanted with the mess we've made of reality"

-theevergreenquill

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Tomorrow night I’ll tell you.

That night it was just us. 

Walking home at night, blanketed under the soft glow of the moonlight and a sea of confetti stars, I had successfully wrapped you up in my favorite blue scarf despite several acts of protest. In the absence of a scarf, the wind’s cold breath had slipped its way into my collar and painted goosebumps across my skin, but your voice warmed me up in a way no scarf ever could. 

That night the butterflies danced, and the muscles in my stomach clenched and turned in response to every step and twirl. And when the fireflies lit up bright bursts of warmth inside me, my cheeks burned and I couldn’t smother the smile trying to make its way from my chest to my eyes, couldn’t help the fizzy bubbles of laughter threatening to escape and join your ridiculous little rambles slip out. 

That night I wondered how surprised you would be if I grabbed your hand, traced your fingers with mine, and told you that together we had the key to open the sky and stretch the night wider and wider and fill it with only us, our fears, our dreams, our smiles, our laughter, that together we could keep this moment among the trillions of stars that you loved so much- but instead, I swiftly shoved my hands into my pockets, where they were safe from temptation.  

What’s the point of loving stars if they can only come out at night? 

“Tomorrow night” I promised myself.

Tomorrow night I’ll tell you.