sensibledecay

[sensibledecay]

in some distant dream, i see my mother. she is glowingly happy, rattling off a story in her native tongue, foamy cappuccino in hand. her nails are painted, fingers adorned with silver rings. her hands are smoother, unworn by years of soap and water. there is a lightness behind her eyes and a smoothness in her demeanor, a comfort in her walk. she is whipsmart, and beautiful, and uncaged. in some distant dream, i see my mother, happy and free. free from me. in so many ways, i am a living manifestation of every dream my mother never got to fulfill. i am the consequence of generations of oppression and the product of pressures she didn’t know she would succumb to. in some distant dream, my mother is childless, and powerful, and far away from the suburbs of the deep american south. but today, she washes berries and organizes them into jars. she offers me a cookie and covers me with a blanket and sits on the same couch as every other day, fretting over what we will eat for dinner. her mind is an expanse of incredible potential, and she is dismissed as the woman with the funny accent as she stands at the same deli counter she has for seventeen years. a few days ago, she gave me some of her jewelry from before i was born. as she rubbed the tarnish off the silver, she casually muttered “that’s what twenty years does, when you become someone else”. i always resented her for placing all of her hopes and dreams onto me, but i finally see her. she’s become someone else, someone she doesn’t recognize. on a short walk across a strip mall, she mentioned that she wishes she could’ve been my mother in bosnia, and that i could meet the person she was before me. i am a living consequence of everything that has ever happened to her, but she only wishes that i could have had a better mother. she loves me like i represent nothing she has ever suffered, and like my future is the only thing in the world. as i watch my mother sit on the couch, staring at her phone while my dad screams at a soccer game, i see her in a distant dream, happy, childless, free, using her beautiful mind, and i feel the guilt of generations of women. as i whittle myself to bone, i know i am not free from her fate, rather living a new iteration of this flesh-eating womanhood.

[sensibledecay]

i’ve never written about how he hurt me. i deserve to let go of this shame, because as much as i know it wasn’t my fault, i’ve never been able to say it all out loud. i never screamed, i never fought, i never told anyone. but no sixteen year old girl deserves to stand in front of the mirror, painstakingly covering dozens of bruises on her neck, her face, her chest, hoping her long dark hair will be enough for no one to notice. i had to throw that skirt away this summer, because when i put it on i was trapped in a bathroom stall, shoved roughly down onto my knees after saying no, walking mortified back to class. i cannot count the number of times i watched the tenderness drain from behind his eyes the moment he wanted something from me. fight after fight before i gave in. welts all over my body, bruises stretching the length of my thigh, hoping my mother wouldn’t see. every moment was a demand, a forceful hand, a rough slap and a degradation i never claimed to want. he once admitted how gratifying it was to treat me violently, how he thought about hurting me so fondly. i laughed it off as nothing, a sexual impulse, but when he pinned my head against the seat i realized how much he meant it. love isn’t supposed to leave you bloodied and bruised, heaving in the shower, but how was i to know? he was supposed to know better, a feminist who held me so tightly i snapped. his hand big enough to grip the back of my head, stronger than my resisting neck. crying myself to sleep while he played with himself at the sight of my pain, i realized an ocean wasn’t enough space to ensure he wouldn’t hurt me again. the last time we saw each other before i couldn’t take it anymore, i left with scarred knees and a pit in my stomach i still haven’t shaken. how was i to know? no one wants a vanilla girl, they want a cool girl. i tried to be a cool girl. i let the illustrious cool girl be ruined and stepped on and strangled. i will never understand why he had such anger. all i ever wanted was to be held, kissed, loved. he never took the time to see me. but he didn’t deserve to. i was only sixteen, how was i to know?

[sensibledecay]

i just found out my assaulter no longer identifies as nonbinary, is using his former name, and no longer only dates non-women. what the fuck am i supposed to do with that information? how the fuck am i supposed to sleep at night knowing another woman is going to feel the way i felt at sixteen? what the fuck do i do now

god i hate the guilt

i am so tired of the weight of womanhood on my shoulders. i have to be better for my mother, for her mother, for hers too. but also for women i’ve never met who won’t have any idea what they’re getting into until it’s too late. i’ve dismissed so much of what he did as possibly related to some kind of dysphoria or sexuality crisis. like maybe he was performing an extreme role just like i was, as a form of escape or self harm. but somehow, his self harm was just harming me? and now none of that even makes any fucking sense and i have to live with the fact that there was no reason or excuse other than his complete lack of respect for me and women generally. he did the same thing to her too, but she got an apology because they weren’t in a relationship, and somehow that makes a difference? i don’t think anything i have to say would count as a crime, and i don’t necessarily want to make waves or have to admit this to anyone, especially my parents. plus, telling someone would mean having to interact with him again and i cannot do that. but how am i supposed to live with the possibility of this happening to another girl? what the actual fuck do i do. there isn’t anything i can do without risking myself in some way. i can’t even publish his fucking name because i know his dad is extremely powerful in the army and probably has money and lawyers that could do a lot more harm than i expect. we were both underage, and it would be his word against mine. even if i just took this to his school, nothing would happen to him. i feel so trapped and so scared. i thought i wouldn’t have to worry about this again. now some brunette girl is going to be laughed into bed with a guy who might ruin some piece of her forever and there’s nothing i can think to do to stop it. it’s like every wound is reopening and no one knows or cares because he’s not as bad as he was in high school. but what if he really is. what if he’s worse? no one ever knew how bad he was before, maybe he’s just learning better ways to hide it. and i know he’s out there thinking he’s a good person. and he’s going to convince her of that too. and i can’t stop him. 

[sensibledecay]

euphemistic tidal wave

vengeful misbehavior

ephemeral touch

echoic silence

deafening desire

fraught glances

esoteric laughter

brushing fingertips

incisive gaze

stretched fabric

lingering moments

intimate fixation

flustering incantations

trembling self-control

finger-traced bones

desperate anticipation

breathy departure

illicit longing

unspoken devotion

breadcrumb affection

hesitant vulnerability

thankless denial

quotidian breathlessness

uncontrolled pitch

[sensibledecay]

you’re the first person to ever call me creative. i don’t think you have any idea how seismically you’ve shifted my self-concept. i’ve never felt capable of art. i’ve never felt interesting or inspired. i have always been a stony robot, executing tasks and meeting goals and trudging through, never heady or inventive. with you, i feel like an artist for the first time. i sew up the holes in my mind with words i’ve never combined before and you read every scrap with reverence. you’ve mentioned that i’m your muse in a way, but you have no idea how i view you. you’re not only a muse, but the switch that’s flipped. i want to write a novel just so you can read it and see me enraptured in the love of my work and my mind. no one has ever loved my mind quite like you, and i want to be next.

[sensibledecay]

i’m not accustomed to this kind of ease. i’ve never felt a voice echo through my throat quite like yours, patched in by the interconnected web of our longing touch. you wonder how we could ever argue, and i know we will, but there is something sincere behind your eyes that reminds me that you’ll kiss the tears from my face and gently wrap my hands into yours before your voice would ever sharpen and aim. this kind of ease is almost frightening. i’m worried i’m feeling too much, or not enough, or too quickly, and i wonder when the other shoe will drop. but there you are, beaming each morning as the sun kisses your cheek, arms wrapped around my body to cut through the wind chill, wordless whispered breaths declaring a deep, mad love that i never thought i’d find. i can’t wait to see the world through your eyes each day and feel the pace of your urgent heart as you read these words. with you, softness is religion and love is a breathy prayer and we recite a poetic gospel of declaration, shrouded in the teasing smiles of a history well-spent. i’ve never known greed quite like this before, like i’m trying to take in every possible second of your smile before it may one day leave. a tugging fear punctuates my confessions, because what if you change your mind? but i let myself sink into the insistent demand to wrap you in the thickest quilt of all of my feelings for you. i’ve patched it together, day by day, collecting stories and musings and quotes and moments when your eyes sank into mine just right, and i know you have a right to feel it warm your shoulders and tangle us together each night.

[sensibledecay]

i’m fully dressed, waking you up with a smattering of kisses across your face, your lips, your cheeks, your fluttering eyelids. you miss me, and i don’t have anywhere to be for a little while. i’m not wearing shoes yet, so i crawl into bed and you scooch across toward me, curling your head onto my chest, still half-asleep. i’m fully dressed and your body is bare, leg strewn across me, my hands stroking your hair. you slur that i’m beautiful and that you love me, and you worry that your grip on me will somehow mess up my makeup. i love you so much. looking down at our bodies, tangled, one dressed, you look so beautifully serene. i hold your body against mine, hands against your skin, whispering how much i love you while you dip in and out of consciousness. i love seeing you like this, peaceful and uninhibited and so tenderly loving. the man i walk next to, hand in hand, tall and broad and confident, the man who holds my throat and grips my hips and challenges my begging eyes, the man who scolds my too-full plate and hands me a bite of everything he eats, curled up and delicate and yearning. sometimes i forget that you love me the way i love you, chest split open, hands reaching out. you miss me, smile when you see my face for the first time each day, bury your face into my neck while your breathing deepens and steadies. you love me how i love you, greedy and hedonistic and pure. you miss me the way i miss you, seeking and longing and safe. i don’t feel like i’m hanging onto your back while you press forward, instead we walk hand-in-hand and lean into each other’s bodies, sharing the burden of acceleration. we love like equals, i don’t walk in your shadow. looking at your sleeping, nuzzled form, i know i’ll get to hold you like this for so long. i love you in a life-building, soul-healing, joyous, subcutaneous kind of way. we’re fusing together and welding each piece into a sculpture of inside jokes and knowing glances and sneaky smirks and i want to carve its shape into my heart for good.

[sensibledecay]

you love vignettes. and sour candy. and buffalo flavor. and pickles and mustard and cuban sandwiches. and new jersey, but only south jersey. you love small-town life. you love 80s movies and crappy true crime, believe it or not tv. you love appetizers. like a lot. and pickles (again). you love knowing exactly which pair of shoes you’re gonna wear, because you only have two but wear one of them every day. you love the arizona tonic. you love tea and trail mix. you love flowy clothes, and silk. you love probably about twenty songs. you love making little quips that get a room roaring with laughter. you love wearing high-quality jewelry. you love the concept of coziness. and the concept of concepts. you adore concepts. you love mispronouncing ‘wolf’ and ‘sociology’. i think you love when i correct you even though you act annoyed. you love hypotheticals, and gaining insight into the way people think and respond to things. you love that i write and that i love it, even if i’m not very good. you love fun little nerd hobbies: legos, star wars, lord of the rings, magic the gathering. you love learning, hence your superfluous consumption of hundreds of hours of video essays. i don’t know if you know you love learning, or if you would phrase it that way, but i think it’s objectively true. you love to feel toasty and comfortable. but especially cozy. you love your little routines: your limited wardrobe, the way you wear your keys on your belt loop, your always-packed bag, your standardized socks and underwear. you love taking walks, and calling them jaunts because i do. you love hot chips and cream cheese. and cheese in general. and making dips and snacks. you love running off to the kitchen and conjuring a little surprise. you love sleeping a little too long, and taking naps. you love rain, and walking in the rain, and listening to the rain, and watching the rain from a porch swing. you love your overpriced little notebook, and having tiny accompanying tools. you love telling stories about your antics from home and the nicknamed characters of your timeless village. you’re a stained glass mural of the things and people you love. and somehow you love me. you love making me smile. and you love holding my hand as we walk. you love indulging my guilty pleasures and little hobbies because you get to see me happy. you love listening to me tell you about celebrity drama and fashion and things you know nothing about. you love seeing me dance when i forget you’re there. you love when i wear big t-shirts without any pants. you love when i eat, even when i’m reluctant. you love how i look in the morning, swollen eye and acne in tow. you love me, somehow, and you love the parts of me i hate. you love the parts of me that i stutter and apologize for and that make me feel unlovable. you love how much i care and feel and invest myself in people. you love me, and i don’t know why. in the stained-glass mural of all the things you love, i’m there, somewhere in the corner or in the center or in the background, i don’t quite know yet. in the mural of the things i love, though, you’re a luminescent figure in the center of it all, glowing with the beauty of everything i know about you and am yet to learn. i don’t know why you love me, but even if you didn’t, you’d stand in the center with a shining halo and a mid-laugh smile and reaching hands. 

[sensibledecay]

the weather app has named the sky: haze. this hour and the next are hazy. that’s exactly the right word. i’m peering through a milky haze when i hold your head to my chest, blurry thoughts and memories sewing my skin to yours more tightly every moment. it feels like you know me too much sometimes. like you opened my skin and removed my bones, reading the tiny carved phrases they hide before placing them safely back within my flesh before i roused to consciousness. this kind of intimacy feels like hovering mid-air for the first time. i’m shocked and amazed and surprisingly overjoyed by my newfound ability to levitate, but i’m not sure i won’t crash to the cold wooden floor below me at any moment. the hazy intoxication of your hands’ grip on my face and your lips on my forehead leaves me holding my breath, convinced that your tenderness and adoration must be fleeting. it’s scary what i’d trust you with, and what i already do. you have full access to my mind, my heart, my body, but i’d let you tear my skin from my bones if you asked. i’d let you slice my stomach and gut me raw if it would make you smile. i’d give you all of it, partially because i know you don’t want it, and you wouldn’t accept it. real love isn’t a blood-soaked ravaging. you don’t let me give you half of my sandwich, let alone the muscle and sinew that holds my body upright. you want me safe, and happy, and serene, and you refuse to take from me as much as i’d give you anything. i don’t feel consumed by your love. you aren’t tearing the flesh from my throat with your teeth or collapsing my ribcage until my voice quiets to a strangled hum. i don’t feel consumed, for the first time, and the peaceful breathing and delicate brush of our fingertips and the cradling of my body into yours are so brilliantly unfamiliar. the air is thick between us, laden with the weight of our devoted reverence, and i never want the haze to vanish.

[sensibledecay]

there is a cherry airhead on the coffee table. yesterday, there were a few more, all different flavors, and i shook my head quickly when offered one. there is a watermelon ring pop in the candy bowl by the tv that everyone refuses to eat, because we all got one, and i haven’t eaten mine. there is a bag of orange hard candies by the couch because when i want something sweet, they fill my mouth and take minutes to eat and have safe numbers. there is an empty container of german chocolate cake on the coffee table. it wasn’t mine, but i ate the whole slice once everyone went to bed, estimating its calories in my marijuana-hazed mind because the label didn’t specify.

there is a half-empty mcdonald’s chocolate shake in the fridge that i’ve taken small sips from over a couple of days. it feels wrong to finish it. my roommate knows i won’t drink anything other than water unless it’s “free”, so he brings me a diet mountain dew that almost tastes like the real thing. when my mom asked if i’m still counting calories, i told her a half-truth: i’m no longer actively counting calories, but i already know the amounts of a lot of things i eat. this is kind of true, but every time i forget or eat something i haven’t had before, i google it and add it to the ever-growing database of foods and their prices in my head. my shoulders are bony and my mother’s pants from the heroin-chic era need a belt to stay up, but this isn’t enough. i feel like i can finally wear anything, walking around in big platform shoes and backless tops and the lowest rise jeans i can find.

because, this time last year, i was fifteen pounds heavier, hiding my body in high rise pants and oversized sweaters and peasant-style dresses with sleeves that covered my upper arms. now, i wear my body like a badge of honor. but i don’t have any good snacks in the cabinet. i google the calories of a wine cocktail my friend offers. i’m trying to prefer alcohol to weed because at least alcohol makes my stomach feel full, not neverending. i finally feel beautiful, after a really long time spent hating every inch of myself, but this ecstasy is laced with fear. what if i slip up? what if i eat too much? what if i let my guard down? last time, i didn’t even notice. last time, i didn’t change anything. and, all of a sudden, i felt unrecognizable. i’m scared of losing this version of myself. this body feels authentic. yes, it means i deny myself the simplest pleasures every day, but at least i’m happy with the reflection staring back at me. my boobs finally don’t make me feel frumpy, my thighs finally don’t threaten to rip size 2 pants.

i’m happy, right? but i won’t eat the airhead on the coffee table, and the empty container of cake will stare at me for the rest of the day, taunting the fact that i ate too much last night. at some point, 1200 calories became my number. and i finally lost the weight. it had nothing to do with being dumped by my partner of two and a half years, of course. nothing to do with a sexuality crisis. nothing to do with falling in love with my roommate and best friend. nothing to do with finally taking my lexapro consistently. nothing to do with going home for six weeks and being sober the entire time. nothing to do with coming back to campus, broke and alone, foraging for scraps from my cabinets until the dining halls reopened. no, this weight loss was just a consequence of finally doing my eating disorder right.

i’m not skipping meals, mom! look at me go! i say as i eat my dinner at 7:30 pm and wait until 3:30 pm the next day for “lunch”. i watch my boyfriend down twenty chicken wings drenched in ranch and follow it up with a slice of pizza, barely flinching when one of his pairs of pants is a little tight. “huh, i need to get some new pants.” meanwhile, every item of clothing that used to feel impossible, zip stopping halfway up, not even buttoning at my mid-thigh, is fitting like a glove these days. and i think i’m happy. but i envy his bowl of cereal in the morning. i envy his cake at the dining hall. i envy the people around me, the men around me, who eat what and when they want, who follow their hunger like gospel, and who make my timid calculations look vain and silly. they don’t get it, they can’t. sure, it’s just an airhead. but an airhead means i’ve stopped looking over my shoulder. that fifteen-pound monster is standing right behind me, waiting for me to drop my guard. but every time i look back, it hides just out of sight.

[sensibledecay]

i’ve been ravaging my fingernails, my cuticles, and the skin on my fingers since before i can remember. as a child, my mother yelled at me and begged me and punished me to try and kick this habit. for a couple months in elementary school, she painted my fingernails twice a week as incentive not to pick. the iridescent purple flakes looked prettier strewn across my bedroom carpet. she took me to the nail salon a few times when i was young. that kind of worked, except they never did my nails right, and i always hated how they looked. one week in middle school, she made me wear finger sleeves on my thumbs, the target of my most frenzied flesh-tearing. i still sometimes notice the odd shape of my thumbs and wonder if i damaged them when i was young. after enough punishment and humiliation, my mother and i finally found a solution that worked for both of us. every two weeks, i glued fake nails to my fingers, glue and nails found at the end of the makeup section in the walmart down the street. twelve when i first started this ritual, doing my nails became a built-in part of my beauty routine. i was known for always having fun nails, honing the gluing process over time to extend each set’s lifespan from two to almost five weeks, depending on how much i used my hands. for the rest of middle school and all of high school, my friends would pull the nail glue out of my bag and superglue their fingers together, or my laptop to the desk, or write in glue on their notebooks. many a time, i would lose a nail on the walk to class and trek back through the halls, examining the floor for the shard of plastic. when i finally got the gluing process down to a science, my nail choices became increasingly funky. i’ve opted for a long coffin style since i was maybe sixteen, only deviating for a can’t-miss stiletto design. always long, always ornate. the nails didn’t get any shorter in my two-and-a-half year relationship with a woman, and many a joke was made about my nails being the straightest thing about me. however, i never really kicked the habit of picking at the skin around my nails. anyone who knows me well can tell how stressful my week has been from how intact my finger skin is, with especially bloodied picking-sprees a common occurrence when i don’t have anything else to do with my frantic hands. when i was little, i really believed that i’d grow out of this habit at some point, but every time i take off my nails to change them, i bite off the new growth immediately. i tear at the dry edges of my skin and peel until i’m bleeding, not noticing until i look down from the tv. i glue lost nails back into place immediately, unable to resist the opportunity to rip my nails apart otherwise. recently, i had to remove my nails for a surgery, told that they would interfere with some kind of pulse tracking machine. in the twenty-four hours that i could use my fingertips, it felt like sensations were enhanced tenfold. by the end of the day, my fingertips were sore from overuse, probably because the skin has barely been touched for ten years. despite the joy of typing with upright fingers and being able to nimbly button my pants, i missed my nails. i tore at the skin on my fingers more that day than in months. my real nails were too sharp, and too bendy, and i couldn’t scratch properly, or run my fingers through my hair without making it dirty. i realized my body was so used to having long nails that i would stop short of scratching my face. it’s been about two weeks now, and the skin on my fingers is all healed. i still idly pick at the dry spots, but the clear, pearl-adorned coffin nails on each finger can’t make cuts as efficiently as the nails below them. for some reason, i always thought this anxious habit would melt away with age, but i guess i’ve just put a permanent sleeve on each finger this whole time, letting my bouncing legs and twisting rings take the place of my bloodied cuticles.

[sensibledecay]

dear mom, 

i haven’t written you a letter in a really long time, but i feel like there’s just so much to say. this year has been a significant one for me, and that is in large part thanks to you and the changing nature of our relationship. for the first time since i was a kid, i want to call you the minute something good happens. i want to ask you for advice when something scary or difficult comes up. things aren’t perfect, and i still need to learn how to ask for help and how to let go of insecurity, but i finally feel like we’re talking. i think a lot of this shift has been thanks to my aging, which has been scary, i can’t lie. i’m twenty-one, and that feels daunting and intimidating. i am no longer a teenager, though i joke that “i’m just a teenage girl in her twenties!” aging has come with a reckoning for me, especially as a woman. i feel like my youth, and in turn, my coolness and value, are slipping through my fingers. this has come with a renewed sense of fear and a surprising uptick in empathy. i look at you differently now than i once did, especially as i approach the ages when you experienced particular milestones. i’m the same age you were during the war, and that feels horrifying. i can barely handle the daily pressures of feeding myself and cleaning, let alone the seismic pressure of surviving when an entire country of people want you dead. 

i’ve been thinking especially about our relationship as it relates to age. i know things weren’t perfect, but i can finally absorb how young twenty-six really is. you were twenty-six when you got married, which doesn’t sound absurdly young, but to immediately have a child sounds like a terrifying nightmare. i can’t imaging moving across the world and taking the leap to get married, only to immediately have to handle the pressures of motherhood, alone. you were only twenty-seven when i was born. i just took a class with a bunch of twenty-seven-year-olds. these people seemed older than me in that they were more academically advanced, but that’s about it. i can’t imagine a single one of them having a child. 

furthermore, i’ve been mourning my childhood a lot recently. i grew up without kids in the neighborhood, without trees to climb, without block parties or family cookouts, without walking down the road to the store. this isolation was hard for me, and has socially affected me to this day. but, i never really thought about how this isolation would feel to raise children within. you and dad never had friends or family or any support system. i look back at some of our worst moments as mother and daughter, and as a family, and see a girl in her twenties losing her fucking mind because she’s all alone in a house, not even able to drive to the store, probably suffering from ptsd, her family across the globe, and unusually sickly children. you were living a goddamn nightmare. i can’t imagine how it must have felt. sure, i can levy critiques about how you should’ve gone to therapy and taken better care of yourself and built a support system, but it makes total sense why you didn’t do those things at the time. i think if you could do it all again, you might’ve taken those steps. 

all of this is to say, i think i’m finally beginning to get it. you did some crazy shit, and i have my fair share of issues, but god were the cards stacked against you. not to mention you had to do all of this in alabama. dad is a good person, but he can’t understand this the way other women can. and now that i’m a woman, approaching the age you were when you had me, i can’t imagine going through the same thing you did without totally losing my mind yellow wallpaper-style. 

it’s mother’s day, so i won’t blather on anymore about sad things (though that seems to be all i can write about these days, go figure). i really just wanted to say how much i love you, and how grateful i am for where we are now. thank you for listening, and changing, and loving me when i’m a cunt. thank you for sitting through my stupid decisions and mean-spirited rants and for watching me grow. thank you for supporting my writing. i can’t emphasize enough how much that means to me. thank you for teaching me how to be strong. i hope i’ve been able to teach you some things too, even though i’m still learning how to be a person. 

i love being bosnian. i love being a woman. and i love being your daughter, even when it’s been hard. i’m sure i will see things differently again and again as i grow up, but i think we’re on the right track for once. i’m still trying to learn to love myself and believe in myself and feel beautiful and feel valuable, but it really helps that i finally feel like you see me and understand me. womanhood is painful, and difficult, and nuanced. womanhood often leaves me feeling like sisyphus. i’m just pushing the rock of patriarchy up the mountain over and over again. but i feel like you understand what i mean when i talk to you about it.

 i’m watching you come into your own and start to care about your happiness in a way that you never have since i’ve known you, and i’m so proud of you. i’m rooting for you to find things that you’re passionate about and finally have all the fun you sacrificed for so long. you deserve to breathe fresh air and feel calm and happy for once. i hope you can transition into the next phase of your life with happiness and peace, and i hope i can help make that happen for you. i’m still not sure if i’m going to send this to you even as i’m writing it, but either way i hope you know how i feel about you. happy mother’s day or whatever. i hope we can keep becoming friends and that you won’t feel like your identity is limited to just motherhood. you are smart and capable and beautiful and so fucking interesting, so go out there and be greedy for happiness. take all the happiness you can find. that’s what i’m trying to do, and being able to talk to you about it has been so much fun. i hope i can make you proud and that we can keep getting closer and that i can keep writing things you like. i’m so excited to come home and see you and take you out to lunch and give you a hug. i love you, mom. happy mother’s day

ella <3

p.s. sorry this is in all lowercase, this is how i write in my google doc journal

[sensibledecay]

the rain comes down in a violent torrent, passing headlights brightening the flooding street. you sit, knees angled toward the window, your back leaning against the couch’s solid arm. “i should be kissing you out there.” “so, let’s go.” we giggle and get dressed, leaving in a hazy rush. when we step out, the pelting drops feel stronger than i expect. our hands are clenched and we’re nearly yelling to hear each other over the thrumming of each drop on the asphalt. we walk around the block, and you carry a bottle of cranberry lime seltzer. we pause under an overpass and look at each other, breathless and dripping though we only walked for thirty seconds. we head back out, finishing our route, and you comment on the liberating feeling of being alone in our fate. “no one out here wants to be us.” when we get back inside, our elevator gaze devolves into tangled limbs and soft lips, the water dripping from our hair sprinkling our laughter and kisses with a reminder of the last time we stood, drenched in this elevator, laughing. when we get back upstairs, we undress and towel off in the bathroom, laughing and fluffing our hair into a frizzy mess. you turn on the heater and hold my arms up to it. i turn and kiss you, fingers reaching for the warmth. your eyes are glowing under the amber light and i love you more than i ever thought i could. our chests are touching, your hair still flinging stray droplets onto my nose. i kiss you like this is always how it should’ve been. you kiss me like you never want to let go. you put your glasses back on, and i fold my towel back onto its rack. this isn’t our last rain walk.