When I was little, I’d always choose to write over anything else. Sing, draw, paint, build. I wanted to see what I was thinking come to life through words. Describing a song, a drawing, a painting or what a structure someone else built looked like. The power it held was limitless. My dream was to work at the New York Times, or be an investigative journalist. I’m observant, sometimes too much for my own good, and notice the tiniest details I feel that photographers notice as they look at similar flashes of life. Below are moments in time, some real, some made up. Raw emotions, and feelings. The grudging, beautiful chaos we trek through to get somewhere we call ‘there.’

Mom’s Pizza

For a second, or ten, I was frustrated in myself that I hadn’t eaten healthy today, and now I would be eating pizza to top it all off. But I realized that no matter what weight I am, or how much I eat, or what I eat, there will never be such a gorgeous fall day as this where I get to spend my night eating my mom’s famous homemade pizza, in her house, in the country. I know there will be a day when that pizza recipe is tucked behind books because no one is left to make it the same way, so none of us even try. There’ll be a day when I’m standing in the same kitchen, wondering how she did that, and maybe I’ll try to do it – but it will never have the perfection it used to. So I decided to not worry about what I was eating that day, the ingredients, whether I’d be bloated or if I ate too many, because one day I’ll be looking for that recipe, and even if it’s half as good, the other half will be missing.  

Night Walks

Walking at night is for people that love silence, but it’s also for the creepers. I say that in the most respectful way. At night, you can see into everyone’s homes. Their plants they have on the windowsills, their eclectic wall designs and paintings. Sometimes even them, in their natural habitat. Humans are made to impose. We aren’t supposed to sit silent, not be aware of those around us. You see their lights that they probably picked out specifically for a corner of the room, you see their work desks looking out into the street and you wonder what they do for work, and how lucky they are to have such an amazing view. You want to ask them. You want to ask them how they pay rent, what makes them happy, why they have a painting of something intriguing on their wall, and what it means to them. You want a tour, but not because you want access to their space, but because you want to be in touch, in tune, and impose. Humans are meant to impose. We are all living in these insulated, painted, paid for crevices of old buildings. Some alone, some with loved ones. It must be crazy to think that we shouldn’t be curious. 

Breakup Diaries Pt 1 

You feel like you’re on a cliff – and jumping means surrendering to love, her love. Creating a life that you’ve always dreamed of, and working through the hard parts of a relationship that you know you need to. The cliff also means discovering who you are. Going off on your own, getting your own apartment, your own space, your own life and becoming the person you don’t know that you want to be, but stumbling upon it anyway. You need time, you know that. You can’t go back now without risking the sudden avoidance, but maybe that’s what you need? You need her to show up at your door and tell you that this is it, that she’ll leave forever or stay forever. You’re confused, but you need her to decide.. So you can stop fighting yourself one way or the other. Do you need to be single to find whoever the fuck you are? Or do you need love, to do the one thing you’ve always claimed you never needed – saving. Because all that matters in the end, is love. And you love her. But you’ve never learned to love yourself.

Breakup Diaries Pt 2

Everytime the door would open, you jumped. Sometimes for joy, for sadness, for peace, or for chaos. The door had a weird handle, you remember and the hallway was just long enough to build up the rehearsed and yet always unpredictable entrance. You could see her hair, peaking around the corners of the cubicle or at the desk facing the bathrooms. You watched her blue eyes light up when she talked, and her lips revealed her emotions. Sometimes it was for joy, for sadness, for peace, or for chaos. You pretended to read your blank sheets of paper, hoping that one day, you wouldn’t have to hope anymore.

Breakup Diaries Pt 3

The song on shuffle we always skip.  We hadn’t heard it enough to like the whole thing – so we didn’t bother learning. It wasn’t the right mood, the sun wasn’t out at the right time, the windows were stuck, it didn’t time out to our destination right and we would have had to end it early when we pulled into the parking lot at work, we’re distracted. And then one day, we find ourselves uninterrupted, ready to listen to the song that we always skip. It’s such a fucking good song and you wonder why you’ve never listened to it before, and you realize it’s because you never thought it was the right time. You weren’t ready, you were distracted, and maybe the sun wasn’t out at the right moment. But all of that seems so trivial now, because it’s such a fucking good song.

Sunday Scaries

You woke up, alone, again. After searching for a connection between vodka drenched heavy inhales and exhales only hours before. Between sheets you swore you’d wash being soaked with sweat from what might as well have been nothing more than a short lucid dream. Between the decisions of clawing for more than one night, and pushing those moments of darkness into the street to be swept away with another passing car. Saturday love never lasts, and Sundays are for the complications of your mind. Do you wish it did last? Or do you wish it was someone else. Did you have fun? Or did you go through the motions. You never remember fully, but you also never try.

Fire Escape

You saw pictures of this in movies. You visualized it from books. The iron rods you aren’t sure are even inspected, praying that your weight isn’t enough to break them. You look down – 2,3,4 stories below and suddenly the world you were just level with, seems so small. The children running in the park across the street, and the parents ushering them to hydrate in the hot sun. The dog walker. The old couple making their nightly loop as the sun sets, and the bartender running to catch their shift. The cars that don’t stop at the sign, and the faint base coming from the speakers of a nearby apartment. You sit, and lay your head back on the brick wall, and realize that while your world is spinning, there is another that is not.

Breakup Diaries Pt 4

Swiping makes your head hurt, but so do the hangovers. Small talk is exhausting, but so is sleeping alone. Waiting is risky, what if you just talked to them? Talking to them was risky, should you have waited? You’re friends so this shouldn’t be awkward but fuck – now it’s awkward. You think your bartender likes you, turns out they like everyone. You try coffee instead – baristas aren’t any better. You give up, because heartbreak is bad anyway, but is never knowing real love any better?

Breakup Diaries Pt 5

That was going to be our home. The second bedroom, an office. The extra wall was a coffee bar. The loft was for friends who slept over and sex in the makeshift movie room with a library in the corner. The second closet was for me, because I had so many clothes. Now it’s walls. White empty walls. Floors decorated with moving boxes and the second bedroom sprinkled with a coat of dust. What was planned for lots of firsts, was just a fuck ton of lasts.

When you know there isn’t a good time

The worst part about not knowing, is knowing. You wouldn’t be in the pain that you were in, if you truly did not know. The worst part about not knowing, is doing everything to not know. To live in the confusion, because it’s lighter than the weight that the decision will carry. Not knowing is leaving room for delusion, for the fate of flipping coins, and picking flower petals only to get the answer you were looking for but starting the game over because you know that your gut, a mythical organ, can’t comprehend the sting, even though it can, and it does. The worst part about not knowing, is once you let yourself know, the suffering will end, and the loss you want to feel so badly, will be the greatest win.

Getting Back Together

What are you thinking about, she asked as your lips parted ways from hers long enough to utter the barely audible, but deafening question. 

You looked into her blue eyes, illuminated by the morning warmth, and you saw the hope, and the defeat. The tears of laughter, and tears of pain. The moving boxes with two sets of keys, and the moving boxes with one set of keys. The flowers as gifts, and the flowers as reaping apologies. The slamming of doors, and screaming in the streets. The loss of who you had worked so hard to become, and the gain of who you’d wish you’d never be. The feeling you swore you’d never feel again, and yet the constant urgency to fill it once more. You saw the impossible, you saw the only future you knew, you saw the darkness that comes with that honest answer you’ve mumbled in the past. You opened your mouth and took a deep breath – 

Nothing, you replied. Just looking at you. 

A moment in time

What if you’re not scared of failing? what if you’re not scared of it not working out. what if you’re not scared of losing the thing you want, the thing you worked so hard for – the thing you needed to be perfect. No, because you’re used to that. You’re used to failing, you’re used to it not working out, you’re used to losing. The sinking rejection is already too familiar that fear holds no friend to it. You are scared, not scared- terrified, of something you’re not used to. What would you do if you won? If it worked out? if the thing you worked hard for – happened? I don’t think it’s failing you’re scared of, I think it’s the dooming anger you can’t face. The anger that you had it in you all along. The anger that you lived so long, with this flame burning you alive, and the fact it almost actually did.

What should we name it

the elephant in the room

is comfortable 

It’s made a home 

out of blank stares into the darkness when we said goodnight 

out of silent tears in the bathroom stalls 

out of fake smiles as we met the people that pretended not to know 

under the ‘are you oks’

and hidden in the predictable response of exhaustion 

tucked away in each I love you

and ruffled within the sheets

Something Sweet

there was once light behind her eyes

when compliments didn’t have to be decoded 

and intelligence didn’t come as a surprise 

when romance wasn’t a coverup for ego

and sex wasn’t putting on a show

“take it down,

that’s too sexy,

I hate when men stare at you,

im sure you’ll be fine, you look like that,

my friends think you’re hot,

you’re wearing that?”

the world prays to be you, but preys on you 

in private, you’re a blessing 

in public, you’re a curse 

you light up a room

but in what way, you always wondered 

one day someone will surely notice 

someone will ask 

Who took the light from your eyes?

1/16/24

to the next,

she loves space, please take her to the moon for me, and I’ll watch for her in the stars.

The War Between Us

Every other time we broke up it felt like war, this time it felt like peace. Our eyes are no longer staring at our targets, but they’re looking up into the blue sky we barely noticed, they’re seeing the planes flying overhead and the people laughing around us. Our hands, unclench as our grip on our rifles loosen, our feet begin to shift in the place they’ve been standing for ages, and we remembered how to breathe. It was as if someone yelled at us  to drop our weapons, because we in fact, were the deadliest one of all.

Facing It

I saw you the other day, you didn’t see me. I was walking by what once was our home, over the bridge, that bridge. I saw the lights on in the kitchen, your car parked where you left it. I quietly whispered prayers that I wouldn’t run into you, even though I was so close I could practically smell the candle you were burning on the living room coffee table. I could take another way back, but the truth is, facing it is easier than the glimpses I would try and savor diverting my route. I can look at what I drove away that day thinking was failure in the eye, and heal from knowing it wasn’t.

Breakup part 8

I thought it would be easier by now. I thought the days would pass, and you’d pass with them, each one more peaceful then the one before. I thought that the colors of you would have blended into the earth’s canvas, and your scent would be just another gust of wind. I thought I’d be craving another’s touch, another’s smile, or at least yours would be delicately forgotten. I thought that I would skip this part. The part when I wonder if we made a mistake, wondering if we didn’t need to heal alone, but rather love together. The part when your blue eyes aren’t all I see, and your voice isn’t the only one I listen for. The part when I would give anything, when I thought by now I’d give nothing, just to try one more time. Because I thought by now I’d be moved on, but if I have to be honest – I don’t know that I want to skip this part, the part where I stop believing you’re the one.  

Breakup Part 9

I stood in front of the mirror last night. Staring, sulking at the big red bulges on my forehead,  my unwashed hair, my pale skin. I weighed myself, sulking at that number too. Paralyzed with the idea that I had to eat something, shower at some point, and get ready for the day that was inevitably going to start in the morning, no matter how badly I wanted time to stop. We haven’t talked in 47 days, 2 hours and probably about 5 minutes. I hate to admit I don’t remember what your voice sounds like, I hate that it’s been so long my brain forgot without allowing me to say goodbye. I’ve accepted that this isn’t weakness, it is not going against the grain of the agenda people push on me to be alone, and heal. This doesn’t fit my words I said over and over again – “this isn’t what love is” – because when I have to lay down on the shower floor, praying to every god we don’t make it to 50 days, but knowing we probably will – I can’t help but take it back. Yeah, we were a mess – but that’s what happens when you don’t clean for a while.