I Keep Forgetting What I’m Doing In The Middle Of Doing It. Keep Walking Into A Room Only To Go In
I keep forgetting what I’m doing in the middle of doing it. Keep walking into a room only to go in circles confused. Boxes are half-packed. An old sweater is evidence in a case I can’t close. Smells like spring sweat and laundry detergent and nights I didn’t cry. Smells like someone else’s life. I fold it, I unfold it. Sit on the floor and let the carpet burn into my skin until I remember who I am. I made a home here. Multiplying myself by one; I'm the exact same number but a process has occurred.
Moving in for the summer. To the house with the hole in the door and the woman with the tongue of a snake. The walls listen. Time has passed and new people love me.
I want to be a lighthouse. A warning and a welcome. I know my existence is temporary. And so is yours. The fact that we eventually gave parts of ourselves to people who may only be passing through our life is even more absurd than the fact that I can still recall a stranger’s favorite movie from years ago. It’s true what they say; a place is only as good as the people in it. I miss you.
I quit smoking two weeks ago. But the craving still curls in my throat like something half-alive. My lungs taste like promises I don’t want to make, I can't keep. A ritual, in lullaby. Warning signs I keep ignoring. A ghosted friend, it’s waiting for you to come back home. Maybe healing isn’t healing, maybe you just learn to carry your rot more quietly. You are not who you were last november. You’re safe; it’s only change.
You walk through the world reading patterns like omens. Separate harm from hurt, sickness from survival. Studying monsters or trying to understand your parents. I’m both the predator and the prey, I’ll catch myself then eat myself whole.
I’m nineteen. Which means I know everything and nothing at the same time; an apology, an excuse. The universe is an ongoing explosion. That’s where you live. In an explosion. We absolutely don’t know what living is. Sometimes atoms just get very haunted. That’s us. When an explosion explodes hard enough, dust wakes up and thinks about itself. And writes about it too, apparently.
Sometimes I lie to my therapist because I don’t want her to think it’s getting bad again. Sometimes I cry while doing the dishes because the clinks means someone is throwing them. My ribs are setting wrong in my body. How did that sweet little girl turn into this horrid creature? everything is better when it’s private.
In the middle of becoming. I keep dreaming about the idea of home. blankets and fairy lights and spotify rain playlists and the soft. There’s something soft in me that refuses to die. It is almost time that I change shape again. It’s out of my control.
I don’t mind the walk.
It’s summer and I’m getting better. hopefully. Dandelions are starting to swell at my feet, seas going over hills. I've missed the yellow. The wishes of childhood. where had it been all this time?
More Posts from Pomegranatedecay and Others
When your card declines at therapy so they bring out your mom in her early twenties pregnant with her first child (it's going to ruin her life forever and you can't help her)
{Hannah Green, from "Are you still hungry, Mother?"/ Unknown/Sam Gordon, "A Mother's Hate"/ Ella Wilson/ Joan Tierney/ Ella Wilson/ Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous/ Unknown/ Nayyirah Waheed/ Sharon Olds, “Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater”/ John Green, Turtles All the Way Down/ Safia Elhillo, "an inheritance," published in Narrative Northeast/ Annie Ernaux, from I Remain in Darkness/ Poplar Street by Chen Chen/ Unknown/ Tumblr User: @inkskinned/ Elena Poniatowska, from "La Flor de Lis," published c. January 2011/ Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom}
happy pride fuck the police
happy pride fuck the police
happy pride fuck the police
Girls who cry when they’re angry are angels
˖ ࣪ 𝜗𝜚 ˖ ࣪ 𝜗𝜚 ˖ ࣪ 𝜗𝜚
Rain in the distance.
of course i'm angry. do you have any idea how many times someone should have helped me?
hello. you left a neon pink post-it with pgs 194-359 due 9/12 in the book, by the way. it is now May 23rd and the library's printer is running out of ink. it jammed and tore my passport application. one of the librarians dutifully blacked out all my information (front and back!) before proceeding to use every unmarred inch as scrap paper.
i think maybe our (plural, inclusive) lives are connected. all of them. i have been thinking a lot about borrowing. about how people move through the world in waves, filling in the same spaces. i have probably stood on the same subway platform as you. we held the same book. all of us stand in the same line at the grocery, at the gas station. how many feet have stood washing dishes in my kitchen?
i hope you are doing well. the pen you used was a nice red, maybe a glitter pen? you have loopy, curling handwriting. i sometimes wonder if it is true that you can tell a personality by the shape of our letters. i'm borrowing my brother's car. he's got scrangly engineer handwriting (you know the one). it's a yellow-orange ford mustang boss. when i got out of the building, some kids were posing with it for a selfie. i felt a little bird grow in me and had to pause and pretend to be busy with my phone to give them more time for their laughing.
i have a habit of asking people what's the last good book you read? the librarian's handwriting on the back of my smeared-and-chewed passport application says the glass house in small undercase. i usually go for fantasy/sci fi, but she was glowing when she suggested it. i found your post-it on page 26, so i really hope you didn't have to read up to 359 in that particular book. i hope you're like me and just have a weird "random piece of trash" "bookmark" that somehow makes it through like, 58 books.
i wish the concept of soul mates was bigger. i wish it was about how my soul and your soul are reading the same work. how i actually put down that book at the same time you did - page 26 was like, all exposition. i wish we were soul mates with every person on the same train. how magical to exist and borrow the same space together. i like the idea that somewhere, someone is using the shirts i donated. i like the idea that every time i see a nice view and say oh gosh look at the view, you (plural, inclusive) said that too.
the kids hollered when i beeped the car. oh dude you set off the alarm, oh shit is she - dude that's her car!! one was extremely polite. "i like your car, Miss. i'm sorry we touched it." i said i wasn't busy, finish up the pictures. i folded your post-it into a paper crane while i waited. i thought about how my brother's a kind person but his handwriting looks angry. i thought about how for an entire year i drove someone to work every day - and i didn't even think to ask for gas money. my handwriting is straight capital letters.
i thought about how i can make a paper crane because i was taught by someone who was taught by someone else.
the kids asked me to rev the engine and you know i did. the way they reacted? you would have thought i brought the sun from the sky and poured it into a waterglass. i went home smiling about it. i later gave your post it-turned-bird to a tiny child on the bus. she put it in her mouth immediately.
how easy, standing in your shadow, casting my own. how our hands pass over each other in the same minor folds. i wonder how many of the same books you and i have read. i wonder how many people have the same favorite six songs or have been in the same restaurant or have attended the same movie premier. the other day i mentioned the Book Mill from a small town in western massachusetts - a lot of people knew of it. i wonder if i've ever passed you - and didn't even notice it.
i hope whatever i leave behind makes you happy. i hope my hands only leave gentle prints. i hope you and i get the same feeling when the sun comes out. soulmates across all of it.
speaking of childhood trauma it's crazy how dabi and hawks both had a violent father and an absent mother growing up like they both felt so unprotected, which is why hawks becomes this hyperinderpendent mature 22yo guy and dabi becomes his own vengeful angel
The Smell of Parchment & PetrichorI write sometimes19! they/thembe kind
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