Aesthetic?

i'm sad and i miss my friends /scrapped poetry and photography/ no pictures are edited unless otherwise stated

[stop-it-that-hurts]

What does it mean anyway, to wake up from a nightmare of men, and find yourself in bed with one?

[stop-it-that-hurts]

you're the first person I think of when I see some tiktok collection of poetry about what it means to be human, and although I haven't called and I haven't sent letters and I hardly text like I used to, you're never out of my mind. every other word out of my mouth is spoken as if I were talking to you, and the other half is about you. I talk about you like we got coffee together this morning, like we slept under the same roof and stayed up late watching the same movie.

i've always thought the phrase "like it was just yesterday" was corny, but I speak about trashing on awful hulu originals and running from a van of teenage boys as if you'll be there to tell the story again with me when I get home.

and of course I miss you.

there are days when I see the room next to mine with the door cracked open and the light off, and I shut it as if to shut out the noise and let you sleep. there are days when I look up flights to florida, just to see what it would cost to show up for a few nights and take up space at that café you told me about for a few hours. when the tickets are particularly cheap, I have trouble sleeping.

this is the season I miss you most, though. This was our walking season, our cider mill season, our spirit Halloween season, our make a mess in the kitchen fucking up some poor recipe season.

I've become a sappy believer, over time, that love is all around. I've come to convince myself that the phrase "I miss my best friend" has been said countless times exactly like this, dragging a chain behind it, an ache like no other. but I simultaneously believe that as much love as there is to go around, there will never be another person like you in my life, there has never been two people quite like us. even if that's selfish to think. I won't ever meet another person that clicks the same way, cut from the same cloth like we are. it's hard not to think it, when I spend my time at work thoughtfully listening to the songs you added to a playlist named after me and I already know just what lyric made you choose it. I hope you do the same, I hope you listen to the shitty song I used to hear on the radio in elementary school that I added to your playlist, because I thought of it for the first time in years, and the first person I could apply the lyrics to was you. I dig to find some part of you in everything I find in my path. every song has a lyric that can fit. I still catch myself looking to see your reaction when someone says something ridiculous.

so I'm at work, and I'm endlessly thinking of you. I'm thinking about a rainy, muddy cider mill, and I'm thinking about spirit halloween and about how badly we could fuck up the red velvet cheesecake recipe I've had bookmarked for over a year now, and I'm thinking about an exotic pet store with a lemur and that weird ride at epcot that only you seemed to know about. I'm thinking about a creek behind the sugar maple trees at our old school and about finding a kitten outside on a walk and about the mackinac island and how much I know you'll love it there, because I have to take you there someday. I feel like I'm inches away from some miracle that will fix the distance, but I don't know what it is or how long it'll be.

I play the lottery every chance I get and I know that if I ever win my entire savings fund meant for a car will be put into a trip to florida so I can tell you in person. I'm disillusioned, but this really can't be all there is. this really can't be how life will go on.

[stop-it-that-hurts]

I miss you more than I think I realized

[stop-it-that-hurts]

no rest for the wicked, nor comfort for the gentle

[stop-it-that-hurts]

and it must suck, huh? to be something so small, that something so grand to you as your final hours is nothing but a second of someone else's time. you were never something to dispose of, to me. i'm sorry i couldn't do better

[stop-it-that-hurts]

it just has to be one of those 'you can never come home' things

[stop-it-that-hurts]

i don't ask questions if i know i won't like the answer, but maybe that makes me weak

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ i know you're here /

/ i can't fucking escape you /

/ and i know you aren't real, but you mean something /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

i helped my grandmother clean up behind our washing machine a few days ago and was surprised to find an old, unopened pack of razor blades beneath it. i said nothing about them, but a few days have gone by and i'm feeling a long lost temptation for them. it's been a few months since i've done any damage to myself, but i'm craving it again, and it's evolving into a scavenger hunt. i don't know where the blades were hidden, but i want to find them. who would know the difference? no one would. it's an itch now, a craving, it's spiralling. i need to find them.

[stop-it-that-hurts]

it isn't easy, not that i thought it would be, of course. i never imagined that i'd get this far, but now that i'm here i realize that i haven't really gotten anywhere. it's early October and i'm clinging on to that fact. i used to have such a tenderness for this month, for this time of year. now, it feels like we're mourning together, the wind, leaves and i. i know that it was always an ache now, and never a hopefulness in the air, that was only my younger self projecting what she used to have. and i'm hurting, but i still see why feeling things in October always seems like art, because the grayness and the wind and the dulled oranges and browns enhance everything so much. it's beautiful, and every sort of emotion is vulnerable to beauty. agony and depression and joy and hate and love all crave the squish of cold mud beneath old shoes, you can feel anything in a sweater, standing with the leaves and the dying grass. i won't say that i was made just to hurt, i don't believe in destiny or fate, and i don't believe that there's a plan for everyone. but i do believe that this season knows us and molds to what we feel. October is raw in any sense of the word, and i guess if there's any limit i need to give myself or any event i need to keep pushing through to see to the end of, it's this month.

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ i can tell that you're mad that i'm like this /

/ i know you had hoped that i would be more agreeable for once /

/ a few years ago, i would have, too /

/ but i've come to love being the dog that bites /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ i'm not fully sure what i was expecting /

/ i guess i can sorta see where you get it from, now /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ i think, maybe /

/ i'm ruining everything /

/ i was supposed to have figured out what i want by now /

/ what i'm going to do with myself /

/ but instead i find myself thinking of a cheap bottle full of slime i bought at the dollar store /

/ thinking of trying to push it back in through the thin hole at the top after dumping it all out /

/ i don't think i can fit myself into the bottle /

/ but maybe that metaphor doesn't work /

/ i wasn't ever really in the bottle in the first place /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ "are you sad you didn't graduate?" /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ slice myself open /

/ and swim in the ocean /

/ see what it's really like to rub salt in the wound /

[stop-it-that-hurts]

after you finished signing up for a lane in the small bowling alley, you were so excited. it didn't matter that it was a tiny place, inside a much larger arcade.

you were missing your own birthday party to chauffeur your sister and her friends around, and now you got to do something that you actually wanted to do. i remember walking over to the shoe rental station, and listening to you ramble about bowling, about how much fun this would be, about how you wish you'd thought to bring your own bowling shoes, because you like to slide when you roll the ball (what a dork).

and i remember not really understanding much of it, but listening anyway, because you sounded so fucking excited, so happy to have someone listening to you speak. i asked questions that i probably could have inferred the answers to, but you seemed to love knowing the answers so much, and you explained it all to me so genuinely, without condescension. i've never met someone like this, someone who doesn't even seem to notice when they have an opportunity to talk down to me, someone who was happy to teach by sharing.

so you talked, and i listened and asked questions, and you just lit up. you just glowed. it felt so good to be the one to get to hear you sound like you did, to get to hear your voice so filled with positive emotion.

this boy who missed his birthday party because his sister's friends needed a ride, this boy who tilted his rainforest cafe frog hat to the side because he thought it looked cooler, this boy who lights up over something as dorky as bowling. this lanky, beanpole of a boy whose eyes quite literally sparkle when he smiles.

and now it's mother's day, and my grandmother and mom scream at each other outside my room because my mom is drunk again and her toddler is running wild, and i just sit in my ruined bedroom. it's been like this for weeks, but even in the midst of stress, of suffering, of wishing i had an escape, you're still all i can think of. i wish i knew you well enough to be able to say that i'm in love with you, because i think i'm getting there.

said it already, but happy belated 18th.

[stop-it-that-hurts]

/ rough luck again, dear /

/ but you found comfort as best you could /