thirty-three (of 365)

Define linger and know that it is what scares you most. Define absent and know that it is what you are.

thirty-two (of 365)

You are all my memories; all I need (and want) to remember.

thirty-one (of 365)

He said it was the rain that connected them. He couldn’t give me any more details, but the faraway look on his face told me more than his absent words. A part of me wanted to see what he saw, to touch the lines that connected them so strongly; to understand why he used the word soulmate (a word I had never heard him say before). But I would never ask him for more than he was willing to give - there are some things that are sacred.

And, somewhere in the distance, she remembered him and sighed.

sometimes i look at you and feel paralyzed; struck down by the thought that whispers of i love you seem so small. how can three little words express the entirety of how i feel about you? i try to come up with something sweet, something romantic, calling upon all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen, but every time i try to use someone else’s lines, i stop. i can’t bring myself to utter the words. you and i are too special for secondhand expressions of love. so all i do is smile at you and think: you have me - completely.

twenty-nine (of 365)

Sometimes it’s enough to know you exist. On other days, it’s nowhere near enough.

In a small corner of the world, there existed a place that can only be described as a monument to unfinished promises. From a distance it is indistinguishable from the environment we are all accustomed to, but with each step towards the city there is a perceptible decrease in sound – the fallen leaves that crumbled under your feet no longer crackled, the rustling of the trees reduced to the softest whisper, and the birds flew in an eerie silence which matched the slowly darkening sky.

This city of silence was, in all conceivable definitions, fragmented. Everything was divided into lines that were held in place to create something - a road, a building, a river, a tree - but lacked a part which would render it whole. Even the sky, which only moments earlier held numerous white clouds now only had a series of lines that zigzagged and curved in random formations.

What was most striking however, were the people. Their mouths missed a line to render it a mouth and without one, they could not speak. The lines of their unfinished lips would open and close but no words would come out - no conversations made and no thoughts exchanged. Their eyes and ears suffered from the same imperfection. They walked the streets this way – half-seeing, half-hearing, and unable to create anything of meaning or substance. They remained intact, yet separate - an unfinished masterpiece that became nothing more than shades of what could have been.

However, even in a place such as this, there were those that viewed their situation as nothing more than an unfortunate circumstance. There was a man that had the appearance of being as incomplete as any other, with the very distinct exception that his heart was fully formed. His completed heart made him see the world and himself not as a lost cause, but as someone who is temporarily broken and could be fixed.

twenty-eight (of 365)

Guard your heart, she told me, her eyes drifting towards the window. I wondered what she was seeing. Was she remembering something from her past or was she just avoiding my eyes, worried that I would see how much pain was behind them? I wondered who she had loved, how she had been loved, and what led her to be so guarded.

I remembered a quote from a bookmark an old friend gave me: love like you’ve never been hurt before. I considered saying it, maybe adding a bit of optimism to the conversation, but I stopped myself. It felt wrong to say something I didn’t believe. I let her words hang in the air a little longer, the silence connecting us and making us closer. 

twenty-seven (of 365)

When I think of passion, I think of urgency; of time in the form of a fading night and a fast approaching morning. It makes me question the meaning of sound (and, quite frankly, the meaning of everything) - does a whisper released deep into the evening have more weight than words uttered in the day? Does this urgency make us more or less than who we are? If you tell me who you are and who I am to you right now, will you mean it tomorrow when you find out I’m not leaving?

twenty-six (of 365)

I carry a timeline of memories on my hands. There was a time when I could almost imagine being able to pinpoint exactly what each line meant: those are from the first moment I put pen to paper and felt the burning desire to write; those scratches are from the time I tried to climb a wall and failed, my hands bruised, but my heart roaring to try again; those marks are from the time my best friend and I convinced ourselves we could enter another world by drawing a figure in each other’s palms.

As time went on, more and more lines crossed over to each other and it was no longer possible to identify them. So instead, I had to remember by how I felt each instance a mark was made. 

Only one memory comes to mind: warmth, warmth from the moment when you kissed the palm of my hand and told me you loved me (without needing to utter a single word).

seventeen (of 365)

I’m late. My footsteps are loud on the tiled floor and for a moment I consider hurrying to meet you, but something within me is saying I shouldn’t. So I take my time and breathe in the distance I am closing in on with each step.

Soon I’m outside the cafe, but I can’t bring myself to enter. I sit on a bench nearby and look at the afternoon light. I am enjoying this - the moment before we meet, the idea of you waiting, the idea of me being near, but unseen, and the moment when I look up and see that you’ve found me.

sixteen (of 365)

When I was cold, I resisted the urge to cover myself with my hands. When I saw something beautiful, I looked at it with indifference instead of smiling. When I heard something funny, I chose to be silent than laugh. Each time I thought to myself this hug I’ll save for you, this smile I’ll save for you, this laugh I’ll save for you too.

I am building up my affection. I am collecting as many of these moments as I can for the day we meet again.

fifteen (of 365)

One day, we will run out of words. I will lose the need to write and begin to stumble over sentences as if they were strangers or shadows of who I once were. You would let them disappear because you’ve told me before you don’t like to bother with them anyway; you prefer an embrace, an exchanged smile, a lingering kiss. You have no need for them and maybe in time neither will I. 

Let’s make a promise to each other: when we lose the ability to write, let’s use the words of other, far greater writers than we are, to remain close. I will give you the name of a book, the page, and the number line my message falls on. So whenever you’re in a bookstore, you’ll think of me. You’ll pick up a book, find my message, and in that way we will forever exist through the words of the writers we chose. Some days you’ll find yourself reading Donne, Eliot, Cummings, Longfellow, and I’ll try not to make you read Neruda so much (even though you and I both know how perfect his words are). On other days you’ll read Wharton and Austen or if I want to make you laugh - Foer. 

And maybe, after reading so many beautiful words, we’ll have some more of our own again. 

(Eleven to fourteen are locked and exist somewhere else on the internet.)