Realizations
 
People make me feel 
Alone and weed makes me listen to music
Theater and cry 
 
Nostalgia is dark water 
A friend visiting in a week is a sigh 
New friends are a sign
 
We carry our keys in case of strange men
You can’t always be the “nice person” in the scenario 
 
You are wrong often
You feel old
You are younger
Than you think you are and
Short ukulele videos are important and deserve more 
Credit scores are not social currency but it is some sort of currency
That’s yet to be determined
Like so much right now
 
Your new life scares you
Your old life has a Clarendon filter
A roommate is a blessing and a curse
It’s hard to keep a plant alive 

…

I Had a Poem Inside Me Last Night

I had a poem inside me last night, squealing and kicking, waxing and waning.

Stephen was brushing his teeth. I became so cognizant of time. How long do people even brush their teeth? A recommended two minutes? How long had he already been brushing?

The ocean swelled in my ears, my hair stuck up underwater in the pool just like my sister and I liked. All at once, I was 8-year-old me, that girl who didn’t know what gay was, who didn’t care about wearing sunscreen, who didn’t care about “being fat.” I was barefoot on a stage somewhere and birds flew above but below me. There were feathers and seashells and I was that kid on my rollerblades in the street, with an ice cream code dribbling down my arm. That time I stepped on glass in the background and limped inside, wondering why there was glass on the ground. Wondering how my parents have given me so much that it seems like that they have nothing left for each other.

The contents of today sat on my tongue, that sugar cube that is a summer afternoon. Our three mile walk through all of DC. The homes, rich with unkempt colors, the heat simmering down for the day, a series of clouds. We walked to Meridian Hill Park. Ben and Sophie came and the four of us were suddenly no one special- just four extremely white individuals sitting on an old bed sheet talking about juice and farmer’s markets and prices per square foot. A couple of nothings and nobodies for those few hours, a comment I make without self-loathing or malice. We simply were not significant then, and are not significant now. What with the Syrian crisis and ISIS and everything else the world has.

But as I held onto Stephen, as the brushing continued, time had never felt more fleeting. This ritual, one moment that becomes a lifetime of moments.

Already nostalgic for a day that felt like the first 25 years of my life.

Like sand through my fingers falling into a well of unfinished poems, unread books, people’s stories untouched.