Snapshots From a Summer

-


  • There is a woman who comes to make a return at work. She tells me "I saw how sad my son was when I didn't get a science kit...I can do without these because I want to make him happy." At times, retail is not nearly as soul-crushing as anyone (myself included) makes it out to be.
  • My brother and I are staying up way too late watching YouTube videos. It is one of the moments I do not miss being at school. This is simple, but it is better because of who I am with. We are laughing, hopefully not loud enough to wake up our parents.
  • I am sitting alone in the art museum. Van Gogh's "Lilacs" reflects in the space behind my eyelids. My journal is open and my mind is clear. It has taken this long, but I can finally find peace in some moments of solitude.
  • Work is rough at times, and one night I can't bear to sit still. My oldest friend picks me up and we drive downtown, looking at the lights and talking about anything. I often joke that my life is overly dramaticized, and there are certainly moments I stand by that, but this is a scene from a sitcom I don't mind living through.
  • I'm walking along a literal dusty trail with my cousin. It's too hot to be comfortable, but I am still content. The night before we talked about life and the universe, and the things that overwhelm me are still there, but it is quieter
  • It is dark, and we are in an empty room at the church. I am not sure of much in life, but I am confident in the two girls on either side of me.
  • There's a dog sitting on my best friend, and we are watching the same movie we have been watching since we were 12. We can quote almost all of it, and sing every word, but still we watch it. I haven't been able to speak in days, but I don't feel silenced when we are together. People can really underestimate the value of a good friend.
  • My cousin is in Italy, but we are connecting across the distance and time to plan another crazy story. Before long, we have a Pinterest board and a collection of poetry. Sharing any kind of creativity is perhaps my favorite form of intimacy. 
  • There are poems filling up my phone and a light pink binder. I do not have all the words I want, but I am finding I have all the ones I need. One day, I will be ready to share them. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"I refuse to feel tragic"

-
Yesterday, I studied the scriptures with my pandemic bubble on the grass by the duck pond. The past few days it has finally started to settle into fall temperature wise, and it was one of the all-around prettiest days I'd seen in a while. While winters are hard to weather, being that I am still very unaccustomed to the cold, I have to agree that fall is absolutely stunning here. Sometimes it's still weird to me that I am so comfortable with these people that I have essentially tackled life with for the last seven months. There are more and more moments lately where I can speak my mind or be myself and I don't replay the conversations over and over and over again, berating myself for living and taking up space. Of course, I am nowhere near perfect, and still have many moments where I relive too much, but I've made a lot of progress and that's really important to me. Two of us are wearing yellow. I just recently decided that I really loved that color, and I still get ...
Read more

Oh Bi the Way - Pride 2022

-
Image
"Are you sure this looks good?" My friend asked one night in mid-2020, as we had a bit of a fashion makeover going on. "Come on, which one of us is attracted to men?" I joke, throwing another shirt at him.  Twenty minutes later, we're talking about women's fashion. I don't remember what in particular, just that I had remarked about some trend or style looking good. "Well how would you know?" My friend quipped, "You're not attracted to women." I'm not sure what anyone else experienced, but I could have sworn the entire room pulsed with energy. It wasn't tension, I wasn't scared my friend hurt me in anyway. But for a second, the room was utterly airless. "Uh. Well," I stutter. "That's a story for another time." I wasn't sure anyone in the room caught my comment, until our other friend looked up from the dishes he was doing and stared at me for a couple seconds. A minute later, my phone lit up ...
Read more

Refiner's Fire

-
Image
Hello my dear friends. It's been a while. I never stopped writing, exactly, but I did need to take a break as the world inside of my head became very chaotic and convoluted. I feel a lot of regret at the things I wanted to write that I never did and have since forgotten, but I know that if I spend more time trying to recover all of that I will never write anything new. And I have a lot of new thoughts, a lot of things I feel the need to articulate at this point in time, where I am now. It is certainly a different place than I was a year ago; it's for the better that way. I think like most people, the last year has been incredibly frustrating, scary, and at times, infuriating. I think I've felt overcome by sorrow and anger more in the last several months than I have in my entire life, which, as someone with very big emotions, is certainly saying a lot. Beyond the obvious struggles that I know we can all relate to, my own personal life has been rather tumultuous, with various...
Read more