July Sky

All the thick and thins

You may never tell me what’s on your mind

How you ruminate

But I do know you’re gentleness

And whatever made you that way

Matters less

Than who you are

Despite it

I don’t need to know

It doesn’t haunt me

Possessing my mind

With invasive questions

I know that I am safe and loved

I want you to stick around long enough

To hear it over

And over

And over

All of the little details

The way my voice breaks

New and different

Exposing other sides of the truth

I want to choose to be vulnerable with you

Over again

And over again

I want the freedom

To tell you my secrets slowly

Not terrified

To try to make you understand right away

Not parsing words

Determined

To outline

And give the perfect amount of shading

You let me throw color at the wall

And make sense of it later

I’ve told you things that broke my heart and somehow that healed me

I’ve broken my chest open, giving you my cracked ribs and pieces of my lung, even as I struggled to breathe

I’ve given you the pieces that I’ve saved for auction because I trusted in their worth

You call me back

I don’t have to worry about being delightful for you

That your attention and love

Relies especially on my sweetness

Or willingness to entertain

I don’t turn myself inside out

Pulling all of the best parts out of my chest

To lay out in display

How much you impact the quiet moments

There is something to be said for the way you hold my hand

(Well really) the way you let me hold your arm

While we’re both tipsy

How you encourage me to balance against you

There is something to be said for the way you show me all the details of you

The processes you perform

(The way you breathe when you’re frustrated)

You let me tell you the horrible things that I am

That I’ve done

That have been done to me

And then you ask me if I want cream in my coffee

You let me laugh at the parts of me I hate

And you kiss my cheek in passing

Reminding me to grab my coat

I imagine that you’ve seen parts of me

That have only surfaced

Because I felt so enveloped in care

I know that you’ve heard stories

That I’ve never dared to tell anyone else

Because I know after you laugh, you ask me how my beer is

There are so many moments where I feel utterly entranced

By you choosing to know me

The way you remember everything with your

Precious, pedantic memory

The way you never let me get away with anything

In the way I tell a story

Like I’m terrified to share

But I have to

I have to

Otherwise it’ll cease

To exist

And maybe if I share you can remind me

Of the moments that have hurt me

Reminding me that it’s okay

To react

To be scared

That it’s a perfectly responsible reaction

But because I can’t recall

I can’t remind myself

That I’m acting rationally

Not erratically

And it’s my body protecting

Not misbehaving

Maybe if I let you in

You’ll remind me to hold myself

My father will drink himself to death

Not because he is sad

Because it’s a celebration

To see you

Loud

And giggly

And wanting

It’s a celebration

Of waking up next to someone

Making good coffee

While they make eggs

I miss the ritual of being held

Tucked into someone

I miss the quiet breaths

And moments where there’s not a breath between

The two of us

I miss the ritual of loving

Of bringing home trinkets

Because they reminded me of you

I miss the ‘plus one’ of it all

To dinner

To events

To the hospital

I miss the ritual

I used to roll my eyes at sitcoms— all those color-coded apartments and six friends who never move away. All that banter buttoned up in 22 neat minutes.

Too easy. Too obvious. Too fake. Until one day I was tired and the silence in my room felt louder than a studio audience.

So I watched one. Then three. Then the season finale like it mattered who kissed who on a Tuesday night in May.

And then—somewhere in Season 4— I realized I organize my life like Monica: labelled containers, stacked expectations, simmering need to be enough, cleanly.

But no one ever shows the panic that comes with being “the reliable one.” The way your care gets heavy in other people’s hands.

I root for Ted, even though he exhausts me. I get it—how he keeps naming things “destiny” just to justify staying in the wrong place too long. I’ve kept poems about people who barely remembered my last name.

Sometimes I don't want love. I want a storyline.

I admire Robin’s detachment, but I only perform it. All that “I don’t need anyone” while quietly wondering who’ll notice I’m drifting.

She leaves before the ache gets domestic. I stay, rearrange the furniture, and pretend I’m fine with ghosts.

Now, they’re not just shows. They’re background noise with backstories. People I didn’t mean to care about talking me down after long days in thirty-minute fragments.

I know the punchlines before they hit. I still laugh. It’s muscle memory now. The credits roll, and I don’t reach for the remote. I just sit.

Because the lie isn’t the laughter. It’s the way things fall apart and still get solved between commercial breaks. It’s the belief that nobody leaves unless it’s for a spinoff.

And some nights, I almost buy it.

But I know better now: I’m not a Monica. I’m a person with structure as a coping mechanism. I’m not Ted. I’m just trying not to narrate my loneliness like it’s poetic instead of persistent. I’m not Robin. I’m just scared that soft things are made to vanish.

I lit a candle, said some words that sounded deep, like caged-up birds. I spoke of stars, of loss, of fate— but mostly just to decorate.

I rhymed regret with cigarette, used metaphors I don’t regret. I borrowed ache from better pens and wrapped it up with tragic lens.

I dropped a line about the sea, pretended it related to me. I named a wound I’d never known and whispered it like it was home.

I made it rhyme, I made it neat, I made it sad but kind of sweet. No blood, no bruise, no honest bone— just clever phrasing all alone.

My old planner gave out before I did. Split at the seams, corners bent like wilted prayers, pages curled from overuse, ink ghosts of plans I made and remade and rewrote into hope.

It was a second heartbeat. A tether. A rhythm etched in boxes, ritual disguised as scheduling.

It carried more than it was built for— lists, late-night thoughts, me. Until one day the spine sighed open and didn’t close again.

I let it rest. Set it on the shelf like an offering to the gods of completed weeks.

I bought a new one in June. Let it sit. Unbent, unopened. Too clean to belong to me. Too blank to feel like shelter.

But today is July. And I need a rhythm again. So I peel the wrapper like gauze. Write the first word like a spell.

Not chasing achievement— just returning to the shape of myself on paper.

Not a fresh start— just a softer one.

Here’s to the worn one that held me, and the new one I’m learning to hold.