Creative Writing – Page 2

028b – flights

Adding this picture here since I think it has some interesting things worth noting. I love how it has things related to the pandemic as well as the fact that it’s the pride month – something else I wanted to talk about it in this piece, but didn’t end up getting to. Still worth it, though, I think.

I’m stuck in a five hour flight. Two of the five hours have passed and I’m slowly starting to enjoy it. Had a terrible night since this was a 6 am flight, and why past me thought it’d be feasible is beyond me. Spent the whole night in the “too anxious to fall asleep” and “too sleep-deprived to focus on anything” loop / limbo. But.. I’m here now, and not unhappy nor frustrated. The airport was terribly packed, by the way. In a way I’ve almost never seen before. It’s not completely unexpected since the pandemic is sort of coming to an end here, or at least a pause (who’s to say, really), but still took me a little by surprise.

I was trying to write a little bit earlier too. I was thinking about how it’s been difficult to sit down and focus on writing coherently. I was thinking about how inspiration has been fleeting lately. How it does knock on the door from time to time but flees before I can invite her in. But it’s interesting how a medium-long flight offers exactly the right kind of an environment to focus.

My body is, admittedly, quite uncomfortable, but I’m sure my plight is nothing next to that of the very tall boy sitting next to me who seems incredibly uncomfortable in the middle seat.
This got me thinking about the economics of shared but unequal travel, or in general… shared but unequal experiences. It’s been quite a while since travelers have been able to afford various privileges for an additional cost, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been on the more privileged side. It’s a weird feeling, I didn’t expect so much guilt around it. I wanted to let him know to let me know if he wanted the windows up or down, and for a minute I’d even felt like offering him my seat if it were slightly less uncomfortable. Then I remembered I’d paid more for my seat and there was no reason for me to have to do that. So yeah, the guilt around privilege was and is very real.

Anyway, my time in the States will be coming to end in around 7-8 months. And it’s weird how that changes things so much. I’ve noticed how ever since I got the confirmation of this news my perspective on my remaining time has shifted quite significantly. Every experience feels retrospective even as I’m living it. I was thinking about the people who made the last three and a half years worth recounting. Some of them were people I knew from before I moved, some I met once I got here. So, so happy and content with this last phase of my life. I think I’ve grown a significant amount and learnt so much about myself and what I want from life. Of course, I don’t know whether I would get everything I want or not.. but it’s still nice to feel more aware.

Flights always bring up a lot for me. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the first flight I took when I was moving here. I was seated with another girl similar to me in age, and a married man probably in his 30s. The three of us had ended up talking a lot and having a great time (flights from India to the US are terribly long), – and it just warms my heart to remember that experience. It was such a great welcome to this place, and I’ve always been so grateful to both of them for providing me with that. Hope I can pass that on to someone else at some point.

026b – on softness and femininity

Random thoughts from the past have been visiting me lately. Mostly good stuff, thankfully. Memories from my childhood, often a source of comfort and warmth in the cold summers of San Francisco. What a contrast from the summers of New Delhi, eating mangoes at my nani’s house. I remember the one time I was sitting next to her watching TV, and she softly held my palm in hers, told me how pyaare and soft they were. She said she’s old now, so her hands are rough and wrinkly. I told her how I thought they’re rough because she works a lot, I’d read something like that in a book. She laughed and then accepted that without much argument.

I value the softness of my skin a lot. The one other time someone’s opinion of it affected me this much was when I was around 19. The first boy I was ever intimate with. He’d whispered a soft “wow” when he’d touched my arm, and I genuinely felt happy and grateful to have my body loved by someone. There’s something about softness and femininity being related that appeals to me, it appeals to the girl who’s always been “tomboyish” growing up. I suppose she cherishes it because it’s a visible mark of how feminine she is, something that sticks with her regardless of how she presents – regardless of the clothes she wears or the haircuts she sports.

It took me a while to become comfortable with myself and my body, years and years of misery and therapy and coping, but I think I’m finally getting there. It’s incredibly liberating, as I always knew it would be. I would imagine days like this as something from a piece of fiction, something I knew I wanted but wasn’t sure I could get. Something I was working towards but not actively so. I always thought that societal acceptance would be the easiest path to self-acceptance (even though I knew that sounded wrong, somehow), but I think it was also some sort of rejection at this stage of my life that actually sped up the process of my self-acceptance. I’d been putting a lot of effort into myself when this one brutal rejection came my way. It was devastating, but somehow made me reach a point of “I don’t care about anything anymore”. Or at least, I attribute getting to that point to that event. And with that lack of care came a lot of forced acceptance. You could perhaps call it “giving up” as well, but eventually that evolved to a healthier version of care – i.e “I do give fucks, but mostly only when I want to”.

I don’t have a lot of structure for this post, since I followed a bit of a “I’ll let the words take me where they want to” approach, and though I’m not unhappy with it, I’d love feedback if anyone happens to read this – was this as confusing as it feels to me? Thinking about Rilke’s lines now – thinking about what he said about soliciting feedback on your art. If you delve deep inside yourself, and you create art out of that knowledge and awareness, you wouldn’t have to solicit feedback. I suppose I haven’t delved inside all the way, yet.

024 – the last drag

It’s the end of my pack. Mixed feelings about it. San Francisco doesn’t sell menthol cigarettes anymore and the kid in me will probably not buy the regular ones. So it’s my last cigarette tonight. It’s a pity cigarettes are so small, and short. It’s a pity their magic (??) is so ephemeral. I want to make sure I enjoy it, so I make sure to take all my things downstairs. My mask, in case I want to take a walk after. I step out, make sure there’s not a bunch of cars around before I light it up.

I take slow drags, it’s my last cigarette.

Before I know it, I’m down to the last few drags. As I contemplate the last couple drags that are generally smoky and carry a rougher taste, I think of you. The last time I saw your face. Before it turned ashy.

I decide not to take those last couple drags. I stomp it out. Nip it before it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. Wish I could have done the same with you.

I don’t want to step back inside. There’s pleasure in being outside under the cloudless, starless sky. Bach plays from my earphones, an attempt to feel and to set my creative juices flowing. I want to write tonight, I want to publish a post. Work’s been busy so I’ve been a prisoner to my desk, tasks, and deadlines. I didn’t meet my annual targets so there’s a desperation to not let that discourage me. To not let that happen again.

I look at my phone, check my Instagram, dabbing on addictive behavior on the ruins of another. I close it before I can find myself sucked into it. I contemplate a walk. I hate my block, it’s all uphill and downhill, it takes away from the peace and pleasure of the walk sometimes. My heavy breaths like horns in the middle of the night. I decide to do it anyway. Won’t go far, but will get to delay going back inside. Sometimes it’s better to do something simply to get away from the contemplation of it. I’m writing slower tonight, more thoughtfully, don’t want this to be a plain thought dump. Five hundred words don’t come that easily these days but the solution is not always as simple as writing mindlessly.

There’s white flowers on the large shrub that breaks through the wrought-iron gate of the neighboring building. I wish I knew what they’re called. There’s also a ton of trash right around. Stray white plastic forks, knives and unopened hot sauce packets. Who throws these out? Did they fall out by mistake or was it perhaps a homeless person eating takeout food? Who knows, this city is weird with its people.

I reach the intersection, I contemplate going around the block. I turn back. The other side is a steeper climb. A light comes on as I pass one of the apartments, as if to remind me where I am. As if to say it knows I don’t want to be disturbed but it can’t help its routine. Maybe someone who wanted to park in its garage would have appreciated it, but not me. I can’t.

I come back to my apartment building, I climb up slowly. I don’t want to go home. I want to sit outside and write. It’s easier to write when I can feel the outside air on my skin. There’s a potential that doesn’t exist inside the walls of my house. I’m tired from the climb. My small heavy breaths and my reluctant footsteps are all I have for two whole flights. It feels harder to breathe with my mask on. I take it off, surely I’m not going to bump into anyone now.

I’m back in my room, I’m on auto-pilot. I knew I was going to write tonight from the moment I’d wrapped up my work for the day. From the moment I’d managed to wind up the dishes alongside of the last few tasks I had. I knew I was going to write from the moment I’d promised myself the smoke. If I could manage to finish all my work.

I see a text from my friend. I’d texted her when I was out earlier. I wanted to tell her about my last cigarette. She says I should call her if I’m still free. I call her. We only speak for six minutes, since I don’t feel like talking anymore. I turn off the music, I open the windows to let some air come in. Maybe it can be nice from inside too.

I’ve been reading a book which has beautiful descriptions of a small town in 1980s Italy. They’re not the words of someone who’s imagined it all. The author was probably there. He probably must have spent many nights exploring the town on his own bicycle. They’re very descriptive descriptions. I’d forgotten how good that can sometimes feel to read. Building those images in the imagination. It’s only thoughts, but it almost feels like a sensory pleasure sometimes. It’s been quite inspiring, to say the least.

This is turning reflective now since I’m not doing anything anymore. I’ll stomp it out. Nip it before it leaves a foul taste in my mouth.

023a – say your goodbyes and wake up

She wakes up around noon on the day they have to leave. She promised them she’d wake up early in the morning but her sleep schedule’s messed up because of lapses in willpower the previous few nights. Her parents are going back after spending almost a month with her. They hadn’t seen each other for a year and having them around was more wonderful than she could have ever imagined. They’re leaving at a good time, she’s not tired of them yet but she’s quite satisfied with the amount of quality time she ended up getting with them.

She’s not good at goodbyes (who is?). Whether someone stays with her for a week or a month, she notices too many associations all around the house once they leave. Places they order food from, the spots they go to walks for. The television shows they watch together, the tiny arguments they have around daily habits.

In some ways, she’s glad there’s less time for the “last day” stuff. Less of the “take care of yourself” and “when will you come visit us?” that might cause her to break down. She doesn’t like airport goodbyes either. She prefers to keep the limbo time short. She prefers the cuts to be cleaner.

She’s made social plans for later in the evening so she doesn’t have to feel her feelings when they’re fresh, she’s found that getting some space and time from emotions can help her process them better later on. She has a lot to do in the coming few weeks and it’s going to start making her anxious soon. She knows it’s probably better if she addresses this feeling sooner than later. She makes some to-do lists and is happy to notice that helps today.

Whenever she gets blocked on writing or reads something engaging, she ends up thinking about storytelling. There’s an episode in the new show she’s watching where someone talks about art working only if there’s truth in it. She’s gotten good at speaking the truth but she wonders how she could speak more engagingly, or more creatively. She’s gotten really good at giving everything a personal touch but she still struggles with believing that things deserve to be made simply because she wants to make them. She wants to add ornamentation and frills to the things she makes but she doesn’t always know how to do that. Should stories be told because someone wants to tell them or should they be told because someone wants to listen to them? Does the world have more bad listeners than good speakers?

She wants to meet more people, she wants to know more about them. She wants to meet interesting people so she can make characters off of them.

She’s afraid of being content. When she’s content, she’s not driven to create. Creation is easiest when she’s seeking something. Ephemeral feelings of contentment and happiness are great, but she doesn’t know if she wants to be safe and warm in a blanket of satisfaction. She wants to be awake, not asleep.

020a – directives for the blues

Let yourself grieve. Take the time out to look at withering plants and cloudy days. To read worn-out books and eat left-overs. Allow yourself to taste your tears and feel your sobs. It doesn’t make you small, it doesn’t make you big. It makes you you and that’s all there is.

You don’t have to ignore that heavy feeling in your stomach, or your chest. You don’t have to suppress the shivers and trembles that bequeath your flesh. You don’t have to wipe your clammy hands, you don’t have to quieten your sniffles. You don’t have to be mature or strong-headed. You don’t owe that to anyone. You can listen to the child in you, you can reach out to the child in you. You can tell them everything they never had the pleasure of hearing. Recount your failures, recount your mistakes, recount your losses, there’s no harm in it.
You don’t have to respond to or engage with all the “negative” thoughts but you don’t have to shun them out either. When you call them negative you judge a part of you that you have no control over. You don’t have to drive them away for no reason at all. After all, they’re (of) human too.

Let yourself cradle the pieces of your broken heart. Honor the ones that won’t go back in anymore. Maybe bury them in the sand or wash them off in the sea, whatever floats your boat. Bid them farewell, they did good. Tell them how the rest of your heart will be with them sooner or later. But for now it needs to live on.
It needs to live on and it can’t carry around the dangling, broken pieces anymore. And for you to release them, you need to hold them. And for you to hold them, you need to look at them, acknowledge them. And for you to acknowledge them, you need to face your grief.

So let yourself face your grief. Let yourself look at happiness and feel wistful. There’s no hurry, you’ll find it when you’re supposed to. Let yourself be surrounded by love and friendship and allow it to not lift your spirits, if it doesn’t. Take the time out to play minor chords and smoke that cigarette. Take the time out to take tests you might fail at. Take the time out to meet people who’re going to disappoint you. Let yourself taste the cardboard of expensive pizza. The bitterness of expensive coffee. Let yourself feel the elusivity of attractive people. Of attractive opportunities. Let yourself see the dependency of love. The expectations of friendships. The attachment of comfort.

Allow the rain to be a damper on your plans, allow the sun to leave sooner than it was supposed to. Allow yourself to cry over all of it anyway.

Take the time out to grieve, so you don’t make the mistake of passing it on.

019a – ghost town

They sit on a park bench overlooking the Painted Ladies, unsure about their place in the world. She knows where they are, she doesn’t know what they’re doing there. Tiny drops of water grace their shoulders as they let the almost silence settle between and around them. Almost silent – not completely so. There’s the sound of the rain and the cars, to start with. There’s also the light chatter of the last few people who haven’t gone home yet. Or some who’ve stepped out again. Almost silent – not completely so. That’s how it mostly feels in her head as well. It’s almost midnight, she never really steps out of the house this late unless it’s to visit people in their homes or to come back from such visits. It’s been ages since she’s been out out this late. She hadn’t realized San Francisco on Sunday nights is almost ghost town.

The night’s precious to her, it always has been.

She wishes she’d feel safe, she could enjoy it so much more.

She wonders what she’s doing with life, giving her time to strangers, putting herself in strange, new (sometimes terrifying) situations, hoping to feel something. She’s trying to figure out what she wants from life, though she knows she may never really end up figuring it out. She’s recently started taking medication for anxiety and depression and she can’t wait for it to take effect, there’s a huge part of her that can’t wait to feel normal, in some ways.

“How do you not know what you like?”, he asks, sending her into a spiral of self-doubt again. How does she not know what she’s into? Is it really that easy for most people?

She knows she doesn’t like the cold and the rain and feeling unsafe. She always knows what she doesn’t like, she’s not as articulate with the rest. She doesn’t feel fully safe here in this city but she doesn’t want to go home, either. She’s not sure what’s holding her here. It’s not the promise of riches, or career prospects.. it’s something else. There’s this idea of accessibility that she’s unable to let go of. She’s been interacting with cool people online and a lot of them aren’t based out of her home country. A lot of them are based out of the country she’s currently living in – America, the land of opportunity. It was never really her dream, but now that she’s lived her for a while, she’s found dreamlike things about it.

He doesn’t offer a lot of information about himself unless she asks, so there’s always a lull in the conversation as she contemplates follow-ups. He never really denies when she does ask though, and that keeps it going for them.

She’s changed her mind about wanting to make money out of writing, she saw some numbers and was disillusioned, at least for the time-being. She knows she doesn’t love her day job but she’s trying to make it work, until some of the other pieces fall into place, even if they do so for a little while. She’s only 25, she doesn’t know why she’s so worried. She doesn’t even know if she wants a conventional life – the house, the family, the kids. She knows it’s just natural selection trying to do its job, making her believe she’s short on time. It’s an everyday struggle, one she can’t seem to find her way out of.

She’s always on the edge lately, except for when she’s sleeping or eating. She’s started holding a lot of the anxiety in her body, since she’s become afraid of holding it in her brain. There was a time when staying home felt consistently safe to her, that’s not the case anymore.

It’s raining heavier now, they decide to head back. They walk over the mulch and the mud, she complains about her shoes. He doesn’t care as much.

The night’s precious to him, it always has been.

018b – thoughts are cheap, my darling

She sits in a chair and looks at the pink lilies sitting on the table. She’s divided them into different bottles since she didn’t have a vase to put them out into, but she’s happy with the arrangement. She’s grateful for the one who helped her pick them out, she’s not sure if she’d have bought them if she was alone. She doesn’t fully get why these small acts of kindness make her so happy, but they do. She feels a little silly when she thinks about all of this, but she’s also happy it’s generating words for her.

Night time’s precious to her, it always has been. She tries to conform to societal rhythms to function better but she just does so much better from the hours of ten and three. She now thinks of it with the context of her generalized anxiety, and it makes much more sense. Lesser interruptions, fewer people demanding things from her, lesser accountability, fewer things for her to solve..

She doesn’t actually have problems with focus. She knows she’s good at focusing for hours on end if the conditions are right. Conditions that the night easily provides. She doesn’t think it’s super sustainable though, since waking up around eleven in the morning leaves her with little time to chase the sun.

She’s been using these friendly hours to write lately, but she might have to consider using them to catch up with some of the work from her day job. It’s quite ironic, she knows that.

Even the motorbikes don’t sound as noisy when she’s writing about them at 12 am. They drive her crazy at 7 pm though. She wonders if if she can use the flexibility of working remotely to her advantage. She knows she was enjoying it all when they’d just started out, almost a year ago. She doesn’t know when it all went haywire.

One thing she likes about the act of writing is how she can go from “thinking” to “doing” without much effort. She knows it’s almost common knowledge how thinking is easier than doing, and writing allows her to become a doer, for whatever it’s worth. Even if it’s often a thought dump, she likes how she ends up with something to show for it. For the time she spends thinking said thoughts.

It wasn’t easy tonight. She got distracted multiple times, she got distracted by the internet, she got distracted by tiny chores. But at some level, she knew it would happen as long as she came back to it. She recently read something about how there’s five elements to the human experience. These are – the form, the perception, the feelings, the mentality and the awareness. She thinks when she writes like this she’s almost speaking from the awareness’s perspective. It’s interesting to her, she almost becomes detached from the other four. And maybe she does. She likes to believe she does. When one becomes detached from the other four, they’re left with a purified form of awareness, she’s heard them say. She likes the idea of it. Ideally though, she’d want to be detached from the awareness as well. But it’s okay if that’s too far into the future.

She knows she’s taking it one week at a time, one day at a time, a few paragraphs at a time. That’s all she can do, really.

–

References: [1]

018a – can we make it in time?

A puff, two, four. His first cigarette of the day, two, three. A honk, two, a few too many. He finishes his pack, he wishes he had another. The car in front of him finally moved an inch, two.

There wasn’t much in the world Aakash really cared about, but he valued being there for his friends. He was finding it terribly hard to accept that his best friend was struggling to get through a depressive episode at home and he might not be able to make it in time to help. He tried calling him. A ring, a text. Voicemail. A prayer. ‘Fuck’, he swore.

He’d never been so upset about being stuck in Delhi traffic, even though he complained about it everyday, ever since he’d started driving. For all his promises about how he’d get out of the country soon, he knew he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to leave. There was a reason he hadn’t talked to his manager about potentially quitting soon. He had the options, he had the admit letters in his inbox, starred and marked unread for him to access easily, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready. For one, he genuinely didn’t like the thought of leaving Dev alone. He knew he wouldn’t be alone alone, but he also knew that none of their other friends really understood Dev’s struggles as well he did. They never seemed to have the same sense of urgency, the same sense of concern. Dev had never said anything though, of course he never would, they both knew they were adults with their individual, independent hopes and dreams.

A sigh. The traffic was finally moving and he was breathing a little normally again. He typed another text: “Yo I’ll be there in 10, you hanging on?”. A familiar swoosh told him it was delivered. He found himself speeding, touching numbers even he normally wouldn’t. He knew he was creating quite a bit of anger in people as he passed them, but he believed he was justified. They didn’t know what he knew, he thought.

They didn’t know what it can mean to not make it somewhere in time. They didn’t know what regret can do to someone. They didn’t know about the promises he’d made himself that one night. The night his life had, for the lack of a better word, changed. The first time he’d lost someone. Really lost someone. They didn’t know the value of time. They didn’t know that sometimes you have to push aside rules for things that really matter. For people that really matter.

‘Fuck’, he swore again. His rumination over the past wasn’t helping anyone right now. He finally slammed on the brakes. He’d reached Dev’s apartment building. He haphazardly parked the car and ran upstairs. Knock knock knock knock knock. He rained a swarm of knocks all over the door. He tried the doorknob, realized it was open and blasted inside.

‘You could have replied to my texts, bitch!’, he yelled at the empty living room. ‘Dev! Dev?’, he continued to yell and seek. He entered his bedroom and finally saw him sitting on the floor, staring into nothingness. Not an unfamiliar sight. A breath, two. A sigh of relief.

‘Hey, buddy’, he sat down next to him. He exhaled a few more breaths. He knew he’d made it in time.

015a – a rainy summer San Francisco afternoon

It’s a rainy afternoon. She looks out the window towards the buildings and the skyline she’s been seeing for over a year now. She can’t help but think of how it’s only been a few months since she’s started associating them with the feeling of “home”. For the first time in months today, she sees them from a different angle. For the first time in months, they catch her eye and invoke that feeling of newness, the feeling she thinks one can only get in hotel rooms in new cities. The feeling one can get if they were to look out of windows of such hotel rooms. It’s mysterious, adventurous, inviting, all in a single frame. She thinks the mystery comes from what she’s looking at, not from where she is. It’s mysterious because she’s not there, because she can only look at it. There’s a part of her that feels anxious about stepping out of the house. She might have wanted to walk towards the buildings otherwise.

There’s one in particular that stands out among the others. Brick red in a sea of beige and grey. As the sun steps out to test the waters, her feelings fade away a little. Almost as if they don’t want to be examined in good lighting. Almost as if they’re afraid of being seen. She thinks they faded since the former gloominess had reminded her of a certain few days in Italy. A certain few days with her parents a couple years ago. It was the last time she remembers being awed by the newness of a place.

Things had changed quite a bit a few months later. She’d started feeling much more anxious much more often. She would almost always feel less present in situations. Less focused on the things around her, since a big part of her attention would almost always be on herself. It was the result of what her anxiety was centered around. Or so she thinks.

It’s still beautiful outside, yet she notices herself coming back into her own thoughts. There’s been no visible change, but she’s transitioned to a different person in a single moment. A moment ago she was fully consumed by the beauty of everything outside of herself. Now she’s only interested in everything related to herself.

She notices how her window (that she’d earlier propped fully open to capture of a picture of the said view) is now stuck and doesn’t close. She notices how she’s wishing for some food to make the observing experience better. She notices how her room’s cluttered and suddenly she’s disillusioned. Or as some would say, re-illusioned.

She feels lost in thoughts. She doesn’t feel like there’s a point to what she’s seeing or doing. She knows the feelings that had come up were precious to her, and there’s a part of her that wanted to stay in them, understand them, and maybe even share them. She wishes she could make someone else feel the same way. She thinks that’s crazy, she doesn’t think she has the skills to make that happen. But there’s something that’s not letting her move on to the next block of the day. She’s trying to write and she doesn’t want to stop, she doesn’t want to get up and order food or whatever. She wants to stay here. She wants to go back thirty minutes in time and feel all of this all over again.

She’s grateful for the circumstances that have allowed her to stay home this week. She’s grateful that her anxiety didn’t come up everyday for a whole seven days, she thinks that’s what allowed these feelings to come up at all, and for her to notice them, and for her to be able to stay with them. She’s amazed by how she’s been overwhelmed by a “positive” emotion after ages. She knows this was happiness, though she also knows that it’s gone, at least for the time-being.

She almost wishes the sky would be gloomy again.

008a – appreciation for the sea

She stands at the edge of the pier, staring into the water the surface of which glistens brightly under the evening sky. She wishes the waves would meet her eyes and bring answers to questions she doesn’t know she has. Another lost soul makes its way to where she stands, but she doesn’t turn around – she fears she’ll see herself in them. She doesn’t turn around, she fears she might have to acknowledge their presence, she’s not done grieving the lost ones yet. She stares into the sea, hoping it’s her desperation that’s making it talk, and not the moon that’s barely visible tonight.

She hears voices float towards her from a little far away, a family of four out for fun, out practicing, trying to catch fish. She hears the voices but she doesn’t pay attention to them, she’s hoping the ripples and the waves will somehow fuse to make the sound that she really wants to hear. The sounds of the lost ones.

She’s been coming here for the last seven days, seeking and saying goodbye at the same time. She fears being recognized. She thinks if someone saw her twice they’d know what was happening, they’d know she’s been grieving. She’s shared her grief with everyone who’s listened, yet tonight she doesn’t want to be seen. Not unless that can bring her comfort.

She’s listened to Atlas Hands for hours and she’s found comfort in the idea of a shared external world. She cannot reach the moon or the stars but she can get pretty close to the sea. This is the first time in years she’s glad she lives near the water. This is the first time she’s fully appreciated the sea and all it can be and everything it can mean.

She is falling in love again. She is transferring her love for another heart into the sea. She tries to draw the meaning out of the memories and pour it all out into the sea, where it can dissolve with the water and free her a little bit. She’s been doing this for seven days, or seventy, she’s not really sure.

She starts making her way back to her house, there’s real life she needs to get back to. She doesn’t really want to go back, it’s peaceful outside. There’s a homeless man sleeping near a sidewalk, she wonders if she’d ever survive a life like that. She sees a group of homeless men talking and laughing. She wonders if, in this moment, they’re happier than she feels. She pays attention to people on her way back. She feels drawn to them, in ways she can’t always describe to other people. She moves slowly, as if in a movie. Everything she perceives feels beautiful. Every noise musical, every movement graceful.

She’s making room for the new ones and she doesn’t know it yet. She doesn’t know she’ll be thinking about this night a couple months later from now. She’s found meaning in life all by herself and she doesn’t know it yet.

—

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