This is a small collection of notes I’ve accumulated over the year—pieces I’ve written that might someday be integrated into something bigger, and unfinished ideas that might never find their home. A part of my writing process—and this might be because I’m semi-undisciplined—is to jot down lines and return to them in the future to see if something real is there. Sometimes I forget to return to them.
I thought it might be fun to share a few with you, in no particular order. I thought it might be an accurate representation of this year.
Enjoy.
(and in case I don’t get another chance to tell you—Happy holidays. I hope you find some warmth in the final days of the year.)
November is here.
The leaves are falling, the temperatures are dropping, and I am drowning in nostalgia. Everything drips with romance. A melancholy settles over me. I come alive, and a piece of me dies.
The mask I wear throughout the year begins to slip and I can no longer hide the longing I feel. For what I’m never certain, but the longing is there all the same.
I live on a landlocked island.
I get these little glimpses.
Images in my mind of who I could be, of who I want to be, of who I think I really am. Sometimes I think these glimpses are messages trying to tell me something important. Sometimes I wish I could decipher their clues.
Who am I? Who am I to you?
The emotional significance of mundane things.
What will last of us is the quiet, diligent work we put in day after day. What will last is what is earned in the silence.
do you think we could ever be someone other than who we are? do you think the moon listens when we’re wishing on the stars?
I had taken to calling it the apartment. The heaviest the I’ve ever spoken. Only when I had to mention it I would say it quickly so I could get it over with. The apartment. Our apartment. Now, your apartment.
Today I visited for the first time in months to pick up the rest of my stuff. Stepping inside the apartment felt like a fever dream. It still looked like ours. All of the furniture we purchased together, nothing was out of place.
My past perfectly preserved in your present.
The desire to pull away the moment you reveal yourself enough to be judged.
I feel pressure to write something. Because that’s what good writers do on the internet, they write consistent content. Also because it’s just what writers do. But I don’t feel like talking about it. Is it okay to have nothing to say? Is it okay to have everything to say and still not say it?
In life there are so many variables. In death you learn there is only one, which is life.
Find me in your dreams, and I’ll find you in mine. Do you believe that too? Do you believe dreams are the through line?
Hope after heartache, is there anything more endearing?
A friend once told me they listen to re:stacks by Bon Iver every time their flight takes off, so now I listen to Bon Iver every time my flight takes off.
I try to time it so that the moment the wheels leave the earth the words echo in my headphones, “Your love will be safe with me.” It’s my secret love letter to the people I am leaving, the people I will always find my way back to.
We might be worlds apart, but the space between is never empty.
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I still think about my childhood best friend every time something major happens in my life. I still think about her when nothing is happening at all.
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Once I caught a friend looking at me. Instead of turning their face away, they smiled. No embarrassment in being caught.
And isn’t this love?
Love, in all its simplicity, lingers.
Sometimes the realization that you are safe comes long after you’ve escaped the danger.
Words, feelings, fears always swimming in my brain. This is sort of how it feels: like static, or pouring down rain.
We hug goodbye and leave so much unsaid. In my dreams that night I tell you everything.
I still think it’s a miracle we get to live among the clouds.
I have things to say, and I sometimes believe the last thing this earth needs is someone with things to say.
you say you understand me so why are we talking in circles? we used to dance circles around each other. i used to find it beautiful dancing circles with you. but now i see your feet were constantly stepping on me in our fight for the upper hand. every decision i’ve ever made i made so you wouldn’t hate me. so how did we end up here? i don’t recognize any of my surroundings, not even you. and now we’re just going in circles.
I’m willing to be misunderstood if it means I can keep my secrets.
Maybe if I write it down I won’t have to say it out loud.
woke up missing Union Square. woke up missing the Barnes & Noble cafe there. woke up missing something else too, but I can’t name it.
Drop me in the haze of the ocean, I want to live in your epiphany. I loved you because you felt like the rain washing away the stain of my humanity.
For all of my faults, I have faith in the future.
We are alive together, and that’s not nothing. I think it might be everything.
so incredibly proud of you — so many wonderful lines here but walking away thinking about how inspiring this vulnerable work is to me
❤️❤️❤️