sensitive thugs

the phone is facedown i already know. that's the whole problem.

the silence has a frequency you learn it once and then you know it forever, the way it lives behind your sternum like something that used to be a feeling.

i don't pick it up.

you are completely awake. this is the worst part.

the train comes at 6:42.

you’ve known this the whole time. the whole conversation was already a countdown, the way every good thing arrives with its own ending tucked inside it, the way you can feel both things at once and not know what to do with your hands. you grip the blanket. not because it helps. just because it’s there and you’re there and sometimes that’s the whole answer.

nobody buys the air freshener on purpose. somebody just reaches for something familiar at 10pm in a cvs and calls it fine. you keep breathing it in anyway. you keep pretending this is what clean smells like.

there’s half a granola bar on the nightstand. you don’t remember eating the other half. this feels important somehow and also not at all.

the weird part is you’re not even sad yet. you’re just awake inside it. holding something that already knows how to end. deciding, quietly, to stay until it does.

there’s a word for rain that never falls. i looked it up once. petrichor is the smell, not the thing, which means what i actually miss is the promise of it, the before, the anticipation that never pays out.

that’s what summer without you is. technically summer. all the right ingredients. just missing the part that makes it feel like anything. i keep having thoughts i want to tell you and then remembering i can’t. small ones mostly. the kind that don’t survive the journey to becoming a text message. “hey this gas station has a taxidermy deer wearing a santa hat in july” and then. nothing. the thought just sits there in my mouth going stale.

a secret without someone to whisper it to isn’t a secret. it’s just information you’re stuck with.

a vow is the translation you can’t take back, and i keep thinking about that, the way you can know something for years and then you say it out loud in front of everyone you love and everyone you’re afraid of and suddenly it exists outside of you,

suddenly it has weight and edges and a timestamp, the way a feeling you carry is just yours but a feeling you hand to someone in front of witnesses is a different thing entirely,

the way it stops being generous and has to survive tuesday, has to survive the version of you who stands at the sink at 2am eating cereal out of the box because something is wrong and you don’t know what but you can’t sleep,

the way the vow is still there in the dark, the way it doesn’t care that you’re tired, the way you said i will instead of i’ ll try and the distance between those two things is where most people spend their whole lives standing, not crossing, just standing there with one foot lifted, the way i’ve been standing there,

the way i think about you and feel the word forming and then swallow it back down because once you say it you can’t unknow that you said it, the way i’ve eaten approximately one entire bag of chips thinking about this, the way the bag said “hint of lime” and i thought, a hint, just a hint, nothing declared, nothing permanent,

the way that sounded like relief, the way that sounded like cowardice, the way those are sometimes the same thing

a promise keeps a door. a vow burns it.

Space and the cosmos has long fascinated me. I find the idea that Earth is this small rock whirling around in this vast universe comforting in a strange sort of way. My favorite space stories aren’t really about space. Apollo 13 isn’t a movie about a failed lunar mission. It’s a movie about what people are capable of when everything is on the line. Project Hail Mary is that kind of movie.

Years ago, I bought the book but never read it. It’s one of those things where time gets away from us and priorities change. For whatever reason, it stood unread on my shelf for a few years. As the promotion started for the movie, I decided to finally give the book a read.

I finished it in 3 days. Which means I ignored a pile of laundry, a work Slack I definitely saw, and at least two reasonable bedtimes. some books you read. some books you just. you know.

anyway.

I was excited about the movie. And I’m excited to share that it’s remarkable. A lot of reviews will talk about the acting, the score, the visuals, or the differences between the book and the movie.

For you instead, I thought I’d focus on why you should go see it. And that is a simple answer. The movie is an experience in humanity. and I don’t mean that in the way people mean it when they’re trying to sound smart about a film. I mean it in the way where you walk out of the theater and feel briefly, stupidly hopeful about strangers.

Most space movies earn their tension from the size of the threat. Project Hail Mary earns it differently. The stakes are just as high, but what makes you lean forward isn’t the fate of the world. It’s a friendship between a human and an alien that has no business being as moving as it is. That’s the trick of it. You care about the mission because you care about them.

I didn’t just love the story, I loved the meaning. I loved the hope. The sense of possibility that this movie provides. It gives moments of awe-inspiring wonder like Apollo 13 did. It’s big and bold in the most wonderful ways.

this one is for the midnight cowboys and the ambien girls,

the ones refreshing nothing,

the ones whose brains forgot how to stop,

the ones staring at the ceiling like it owes them something,

the ones who took the pill and felt it do nothing,

the ones who took two,

the ones who know every creak their house makes at 3am

like a language they never asked to learn.

you know the thing, the way a thought comes in friendly and then just doesn’t leave, the way it brings friends, the way its suddenly 4am and you’re thinking about something you said in 2011 and also your taxes and also whether anyone has ever really known you and also that one time you were mean to someone in seventh grade and they probably forgot but you didn’t and also what you want for breakfast and also whether breakfast is even a thing you deserve and also the way that one person laughed and whether it meant something and also it didn’t mean something and also maybe it did, all of it at the same volume, all of it at once, none of it with a point, none of it with an off switch, none of it interested in your morning alarm.

dreams are in there somewhere.

past the noise.

past the part of your brain that runs the highlight reel

of every almost and not yet and what if and why didn’t you and

you should have said and why do you always and

here we go again.

this is for the ones eating cereal over the sink at 3am

because lying down just made it louder.

the ones watching the sky change colors

like they planned to.

the ones who gave up and turned on something

they’ve already seen

just to have a voice in the room

that isn’t theirs.

you’re not broken.

you’re just loud on the inside.

we all are.

every single one of us

staring at our phones in the dark

reading something that doesn’t matter

because the alternative is just

lying there

with everything we are.

pull up a chair.

the ceiling isn’t going anywhere.