My thought menagerie

The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass...

[chasing-lightning]

braver, softer

There are things I do not say.

Not because I am hiding—

but because some truths feel more sacred when they’re held,

not spoken.

Like the way it feels when I write letters I never send.

Or how the constellations on my ceiling are named after people who never stayed.

Or the way l close my eyes when my name is spoken gently,

just so I remember what safety sounds like.

I keep a box in my mind labeled “Almost.”

Almost loved.

Almost said.

Almost stayed.

It rattles sometimes when I am alone,

like bones trying to become wings.

I do not throw it away.

I just rearrange it.

Softly.

Like memory deserves a place to rest.

There are things I leave in the quiet.

Like forgiveness.

Like tenderness.

Like the version of myself that was told she had to be everything just to be enough.

I let that version sleep now.

[chasing-lightning]

 I want to have a solid female friendship more than anything right now in life

[chasing-lightning]

Don’t know if I’m gonna actually apply this, but I think it’s interesting to reflect on

Don’t stay up late for anything you wouldn’t wake up early for

[chasing-lightning]

Bojack

Little miss sunshine

The Florida project

Mr nobody

Rachel getting married

Sometimes Ben button

[chasing-lightning]

My only crime is that I was too small to live

[chasing-lightning]

Oliver and ortell

Oteria

[chasing-lightning]

Whenever I talk to god I talk about you

[chasing-lightning]

I am the love I give not the love I receive

[chasing-lightning]

A fortune cookie without a fortune cookie analogy for a purposeless driven life

[chasing-lightning]

All l beauty visible from the mountain top was created from heat and pressure bubbling under the surface

[chasing-lightning]

Locked into a race with the world to see who can forget each other first

[chasing-lightning]

Your damage isn’t interesting and you are unworthy of love -bojack

[chasing-lightning]

I want to try to change one more time

[chasing-lightning]

Well then I close my eyes

Gamble with my life

Trying not to smile

Maybe this time

I won’t be alright

Maybe this time….

Russian roulette

[chasing-lightning]

Then I close my eyes

Gamble with my life

Trying not smile

Maybe this time I won’t be alright

[chasing-lightning]

Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning (rip)

I wish I never met you

so I’d never have to say goodbye.

I wish I could pretend I mean that.

But we both know that’s a lie.

Because knowing you

made the world feel safer somehow.

—

I wish we spent more nights

outside your car at the Camden,

smoking menthols

and talking about nothing

until somehow it became everything.

You may not remember,

but one late night while standing in the parking lot

outside your Mercedes,

you looked at me and said

it isn’t hard

to show me empathy.

I don’t think you realized

how devastatingly beautiful

those words were to hear.

Because you said them so casually,

while unknowingly healing parts of me

I wish I told you right there

how your words felt like blankets

thrown over my barbed wire.

I wish you knew

I walked back into my apartment afterward

and cried in my bed.

Not gracefully.

Not quietly.

The kind of crying

you only let yourself do alone.

Somehow, without even trying to,

you made me believe

in myself again.

—

I wish you knew

what it did to me

when you’d go out of your way

to make me feel beautiful smiling

when I had spent so many years

trying to hide it.

—

I wish you knew

what it meant to me

when you’d move me farther from traffic or danger

without thinking about it.

Maybe to you

it was instinctive.

Ordinary.

But to me

it felt like being cared for

in a language

I had almost forgotten existed.

Such a small thing.

But it meant everything

knowing someone wanted me home safely.

That someone valued if I was alive.

That someone found me worthy of care.

—

I wish we took more walks together

even when my dog loved you more than me.

I wish I could hear you laugh again

when he’d poop standing on two legs

against a palm tree

like some weird little cryptid creature.

—

I wish I called you more

even when you didn’t pick up,

just so you could’ve known

how often you crossed my mind.

But I always worried

maybe that would be too frequent.

Maybe I’d cross a line.

Maybe I was becoming too much.

—

I wish I memorized your voice

instead of assuming I always would.

Whenever I asked how you were doing,

you’d always say

“wildly mediocre.”

And now I would give anything

to never question if I’ll hear you say it again.

(I will probably always say it in your honor moving forward.)

I replay it in my head

over and over,

trying to remember

your voice exactly.

—

I even wish I made my house more of a mess

just so you’d offer to help me clean. (Lol)

But we both know

we would’ve spent the entire time talking instead.

Talking until morning.

Pretending sleep wasn’t real.

—

I wish I paid more attention

to the sound of your laughter

while I still had it near.

I wish I memorized your expressions better.

The pauses in your speech.

Your effortless humor.

Your snide remarks.

I never thought

I would have to survive without them.

-

I wish I didn’t have to pretend

this wasn’t quietly killing me inside.

-

I wish I took a picture of you tonight.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

And I still don’t know

if love sometimes refuses

to admit when something is ending.

I wish I took your sweater

when you offered it to me tonight,

just so years from now

I’d still have something

that smelled like you

& the cigarettes on your sleeves.

-

But really,

I wish I could’ve shown you

even a fraction

of what your empathy did to me.

How it reached parts of me

that had survived too long

without softness.

But I was always too nervous

to fully show my vulnerability.

So instead I hid it

in late-night talks,

in marijuana smoke,

in wanting five more minutes

just to spend time with you.

—

I wish I could say I was religious

or that I believed everything happens for a reason.

I wish I could say

this pain feels purposeful somehow.

But you made me believe

goodness exists anyway even while pain exists.

Not the kind people preach about.

Just quiet goodness.

And maybe that was enough

to make me believe

without believing in anything at all.

-

I wish today wasn’t real.

And more than anything,

I wish this sounded less like goodbye

and more like all the time

we still thought we had left.

-

I wish the people we love

didn’t slowly transform

from something tangible

into memory.

I wish love alone

was enough to keep a person alive.

Because you would be immortal.

But maybe that’s what grief really is.

Love persevering.

<3

[chasing-lightning]

I feel so hopeless I want to die