On some days like today, it’s easier to remember what I’m not rather than what I am. I know I’m not the flashing lights at the storefront, guiding the people to where all the hustle and bustle is happening when they’re looking for a better time — or the anticipated green light after a rush hour spent in stopped traffic. I’m not electric yellow. I’m not the playlist blasting through the walls. I’m not the echoing voice of the announcer, and I’m not being announced. I’m not the edge, and I’m not on it either.

He said he was ready to move out but not to move away. There’s a deafening metaphor in there for exactly how I’m feeling that I don’t need to spell out.

returning or departing, one or the other | e. c. 11-23-19 / 12-14-19

Last night I tried to write, and I just.... couldn’t. It had been so long, and I’ve gotten so old that I’m not sure if I’m even the same person who was able to way back when. It’s hard, losing a piece of yourself that you used to lay your identity in. Maybe I’m not the same sunsets I marveled at when I was 19 or the songs that I thought added a whole mile onto my 20-year-old soul.

…And if you haven’t gotten it by now, let me tell you: it goes your way for a little while — it goes and it goes and it goes, and you feel like you’ve got the whole globe spinning on your pointer finger like a basketball. And then when everything starts to go awry, whether slowly but surely or all at once, that’s exactly how it feels: earth-shattering, groundbreaking, world-shaking. You start to realize how softly human arrogance creeps in — what a funny thing it is that we ever let it. And now you can laugh at yourself, remembering just how human you forgot you were. Maybe it’s the job you just knew you’d get. Maybe it’s the relationship that succumbed to the odds. Maybe it’s the elective you took for fun, and now your GPA is suffering for it. (It’s not!!!) Maybe it’s the conversation that went downhill. Maybe it’s the letting go that you never wanted to learn how to do. But think about it — for the rest of your life if you need to: how liberating is it to know that everything’s not in your control and that it never will be?

Sometimes missing you seems like the cruelest thing I can do.

When I was younger I thought feelings were little labels never larger than two syllables — hoping, happy, sad, mad — but now in the last close to twenty years I've come to know that they're big things, a little too big to be conveyed on paper half the time. Expectations exceeded (ever unexpectedly), solo night drives full of guilty pleasure playlists and introspection, conversations that finally happened, conversations that shouldn't have happened, reunions, having things in common, good songs by good artists, a sunset in a new color but familiar company below it, the way it was, and the way it's stayed. And I hate the word cherish. I think it's the cheesiest thing in the world and entirely reminiscent of that moment when everything works out at the end of a Hallmark movie. But it's something that should be on my to-do list more often. If not that, then to remember how things felt and collect them as lessons (because not just everything can make it to the mental nostalgia file). But what was ever wrong with gratitude and letting it be known, anyway — and why was it ever a thing to not allow life all its meaning?

I woke up and there was snow on the ground and the sky was blue* and it reminded me of you because it's your favorite color so you wear it all the time even though you don't think it looks any good on you. I love that you don't care. It's like that white-pants-past-labor-day confidence you have even when you're eating cheese fries and ketchup because you don't mind getting messy, on a separate level, too, when you ask me how I'm doing. When I think of you, I think of patience — I hope I catch some of yours someday. By the way, I looked over that playlist I made that I asked you to listen to and I realized it wasn't even that good, but you listened to the whole thing anyway and it's kind of an honor. It's not always gonna be this easy, seeing you all the time and everything being fun and effortless and light until the occasional necessary heavy. Thanks for being here, even when you're there. (*it was a transparent moody blue, kind of like you)

I hate that we’re so almost.

Dear 2017, This is me, 360 days of documentation ending in ’-17’ under my sleeve. From entry to near exit, some of my best have ended in that time stamp. (Everything I couldn’t find words for rests between the 1 and the 7.) You’ve been a friend, a teacher, a fleeting few minutes, a bigger picture — a year in the making vividly made. You have taught me to live in moments without feeling guilt from catching the memories and to let go of the moments that weren’t worth keeping. You’ve shown me the fear of being stagnant (a healthy fear it’s been) and the paralleling thrill of progress. You have proven to me that everything happens for a greater good and, from that, given me hope for the greater good that I’m still waiting for. You have humbled and reminded me that there’s patience I need to build; that my love is still far from unconditional; and that I don’t know people as well as I think I do — no one knows anyone as well as they think they do. So love and love and love because you just never know. You have been an outlet to my off-and-on, up-and-down multidimensionality that confuses even me: always some kind of everything simultaneous. I’ve learned that people should teach you lessons, but people should never be treated as lessons. I’ve become a firm believer in celebrating little victories and the behind-the-scenes perseverance that it took to get there. So often I’ve forgotten how deeply and richly God loves me, and I probably won’t ever be able to fathom it. I’ve seen it in the skies you’ve flashed at me with a palette incomprehensible, and I’m happy my eyes are open to it. Thanks for turning me into the most ‘me’ I’ve ever been and for being in talks with the clock to put me right where I’ve needed to be exactly when. You’ve set the bar high and not in an unrealistic ‘hoping too hard’ way, but in an exhale of relief ready for a 52-week carried-out adrenaline rush. I know 2018 can match and even surpass you in a way we’d both like because you’ve taught me to let it. To you and your seasons of understanding, growing, and uncovering truth. All my love and nostalgia with you.

you make my... you make my poetry stutter just when I thought I could hide behind the boldness of my ink

Here's the thing about me: there's not one bone in my body that knows the meaning of 'casual,' and I might as well cut it out of the dictionary and throw it away because it wouldn't make my life any different. Pen up and pen down, my hands know that about me all too well, yet they convince me to keep trying to define it until I come to the only conclusion that I wasn't ever meant to know the feeling of casual anything. Maybe it's the way we saw the sky turn red together that one time last August and I'm still talking about it now in December; the way those seventeen messages that we exchanged till 2am were such a big deal because we surpassed small talk so easily; the way we started driving to the restaurant but turned around halfway because we ran out of time and I still had the best time because I got to sit next to you in the passenger seat; the way I have to keep telling myself that nothing's changed between us because it hasn't; and the way I wouldn't have known the significance of any of these if I'd ever learned the meaning of 'casual.'

…but in the grand scheme of December (and, I’m hoping, all to follow) everything’s okay.

Why do you care if it meant something to me if it meant nothing to you?

they always told me to find shelter in a storm for fear of getting struck if an act of creation should seek out the bottom of my luck stability in an earthquake if the road I travel provides only otherwise heat in the freezing when my cheeks turn the color of the winter I walk on but here I am, running headfirst — rain staining my hair a few shades darker, my eyelashes returning from black to brown, ready to let my limbs hit the mud should I slip to the ground — straight for the thunder and lightning abiding in your bones

your words are like wine withheld to postpone any conveyance of weakness I've never been more sober, and it's driving me mad

Let life happen to you and stop worrying that other people’s lives will resemble yours too closely. Allow yourself to fall into clichés and to fall into them often because I can assure you that someone else has already felt their own bones rattle underneath their teenage skin amidst the wind and the waves of exhilaration to insecurity and someone else has already let their own heart break in eight different ways all in the same place and someone else has already melted beside their awe on an august evening when the sky turned orange and the sun turned red and their party of three was driving right into it, but to let your similarities with the whole world before you keep you from contributing to the one you’re in now would be the gravest crime to your experience. So paint your heart pink no matter who did it yesterday. Let your life flow down the rivers that it knows.