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#photographs #portraits

since the beginning of this year, I haven’t been writing much at all. and I feel — in some recurring impression pressing on my mind — that all the things I've been meaning to write have already evaporated through pores of lost time. words hurtling past open doors. joining hand in hand elsewhere, in the form of an ethereal stillness that cannot be described — surely another writer must have caught them in the sunlight. one morning I felt like laying my feelings down, felt like tethering them to a tree. and yet, I struggled to erase all this excess static. I yearned to be granted back the ability to have sentences surrender themselves to me, but instead, I’ve ruminated over my overused excuses, I’ve allowed myself to be terribly and frequently absent. not much comes without diligence. weekday mornings, pale shadows cast on the walls of my basement apartment, unable to distinguish between the hours of the day. the sharp gasp right before shifting into a bulletproof silence — when you ask yourself, did I make time for the right things today? I seem to be gradually less tolerant for the boisterous. for the heavy noise. the city and its exaggerated forte. I try to house within me a gentle hour. gather pools of wisdom in my arms, when I can. craft playlists with only soft melodies and lots of stringed instruments and listen to them when the backend of my heart aches, from sadness or misinterpreted nostalgia or a sentence of a poem that had me breaking inside a little. but now, recruiting all these words back into my vocabulary, how familiar this feels, carrying on with the tail ends of my thoughts bouncing off each other. like sitting down an old friend — where have you been? let’s find ourselves again. there hasn’t been too much darkness, I’d say. I think that more than anything, I’ve felt this inexplicable peace. all those fine grained sorrows filtered out. and when you ask, does this count as happiness? I’d tell you that it does.

#words

#photographs

There was something I wanted to write about, but I've waited much too long. Here is another washed out feeling. You plunged into it headfirst, but you resurfaced eventually; you came out breathing, more alive. Remember when you were a kid, and you went through a phase when astronauts were the most fascinating humans alive? And you drifted off to sleep dreaming about what we would look like from space? The Earth, glistening. Something about the stars you didn't understand yet, what it felt like being in love. We were smiling down on everyone we loved. We drew pictures of people joining hands around the planet, defying gravity, defying the worst of our battles. We’ve been taught the impossible. All my life I’ve treaded lightly, I believed in foresight, in looking inwards, and still I lose my footing. There is a memory I have of you, dimly-lit, muddy around the edges -- time was nonexistent, I breathed into your shoulder, and there was something there, something monumental, despite however small and insignificant it may have actually been. I felt the sunset of your soul cast a shadow over me. I memorized the warmth of it on the tips of my fingers. A static thought lapped at my mind, and I knew then that perhaps I was okay with not knowing.

#words

#photographs

It doesn’t matter because I’m leaving. What’s important are the endings; that’s what you remember. This is an ending crafted from love rather than heartache. A channel to a more electric beginning. Something stirs, and I say, “tomorrow my foot won’t be in the door.” This is where I double check my emotions and discard the ones that wreak havoc in my soul. I knew you loved me, I knew by those half looks you gave me, the ones that made me smooth over the edges of the earth, blurring the line between the possible and impossible. I could tell by the strong grasp of your embrace, by the way your goodbyes were scratchy-throated, shaky, lingering. I placed my hand over your heart for a moment and the monsoons knocked me over. I am not running, I repeated to myself, I am not running. There is a difference between being forced away and having something taken away from you. The end result: one morning you will wake with tears in your eyes, and however many months later, remembering will cause your heart to swell, but this time, only for as long as you allow. The other night a gust of wind blew through my window. The air choked me in my sleep. Sometimes I wonder whether or not you knew that if it were me, I would’ve waited for you. I would’ve stretched my eyes to see further. And at the very last second, I would’ve changed my mind.

#words

#photographs

Toronto’s Christmas Market, Clara Jo

#photographs

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