#xyears

[xyears]

And I think about it all the time Lights went out, you were fine You kinda struggle not to shine

Dermot Kennedy, An Evening I Will Not Forget

[xyears]

She said, "How could I love you back, you, who dropped your dreams in the gutter?" And in my winter, she'll be burning slow Feels like December knows me well

— Dermot Kennedy, Moments Passed

[xyears]

I’d sit in your sadness. I’d soak up your light. I’d swim in your laugh. I’d radiate your anger right back at you, right back at you. And I am tempted to think I ought to just leave already.

[xyears]

And do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? Will you forgive my soul when you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?

Taylor Swift ft. The National, Coney Island

[xyears]

So we meet— you’ve got two kids, or three, and you dote on your boy so sweetly, and your daughter becomes you, and you are your mother’s daughter, ultimately— and you think I look so similar to someone you once knew, a face you cannot place as you card through the endlessly long deck of your memories— and I think it’s so fucking fascinating how complex, how complicated, how rich our short existences can be. I’m flawed and in my hopes you give me some grace, so now I let others speak for me and I acknowledge the distance between us. I hate you but I at one point loved you, and that’s all I really have to say.

[xyears]

Let me tell you this: I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what importance it holds. I don’t think I laugh about these things, even years later. (The wanting is gone, perhaps, or at least most of it is, but I don’t quite think of it as ridiculous. Ever. Not yet. And that might be a fault.) Tell me that you’ll be around. Tell me that we’ll speak of each other again. Tell me it isn’t so bad to hold on. I would like to think it isn’t. (So it isn’t.)

Tell me three things and we can walk away from each other on and on for the rest of time.

You should not become my entire identity. I should get out of here. Stop getting lost in it. Dig my foot down somewhere in the ground. Look up and there is just the sun, and there are just the clouds. And sure, the breeze in the air is as lovely as you, but it is also just lovely.

It’s okay.

[xyears]

People pass through like ghosts and my mind still wanders over to where you’re standing in this world relative to me. By that I mean, I wonder how the axis of the world tilts, and how I should orient myself to lean in its direction so. I seem to do too much, yet never enough. It’s a disappointing thing, the way I know I’m satiated until I don’t.

I scrutinize myself. I question attraction. It isn’t so profound, perhaps. You’re pretty. You’re unabashed. You’re annoying. You’re kind. You’ve got dreams. And I wish I knew more of what they are. I wish I could tell you: I like you. I just like you. That’s all you should know.

We run in two different directions on separate planes. Here, we meet for an instant, and I seem to get caught like an animal. I seem to trip over my two feet. I seem to be staring at the ground. I seem to be staring at your backside. Breathing. And looking. And breathing.

Even much after, with all the distance, with the pulling apart. I’m staring. I’m looking. So let me tell you. Let me say something.

[xyears]

I think: So many missed chances. So many. Lifetimes will fly by. And winter bleeds out into spring. Yet there are sidelong glances and trailing silently behind your footsteps, which must be enough. A lifetime of that. My darling. Won’t you look at me this once?