kiernancore

[kiernancore]

Terminal Illness, Gate A6 — a short story in five acts (part 2)

ACT III: Gate Change 

[PA ANNOUNCEMENT, 8:21 PM]

“Attention passengers: Flight 882 to Portland has been reassigned to Gate C4.”

There’s no longer a seat between them. She doesn’t remember if he moved or she did.

No declaration. No suggestion. Just a glance, a silence, and then motion. She likes that part. How some decisions arrive without language. Like the universe granting permission.

The bar is half-empty, lights low and unflattering. The basketball game is in over-time. She sits beside him now. Close enough to smell the whiskey. Fresh drinks arrive. She picks up her glass but doesn’t sip. Just holds it. Lets it warm in her hand like something sleeping.

“It’s quiet now,” he says. She nods. Not because she agrees. Because she doesn’t want to break it.

She tells him a real story. About skipping class sophomore year, lying on a tennis court at midnight with someone she shouldn’t have loved. How the stars looked like holes in the sky. How she cried without knowing why.

He tells her one too. A train in Spain. A girl with short hair and a red coat. “I was waiting for a sign,” he says. “I always do.” She watches the way his mouth forms the word sign.Watches how badly he wants this to be one of those moments.

She thinks, If he kissed me now, I’d let him. I wouldn’t tell him the truth. 

He says, “I know it sounds... I don’t know. But I keep thinking this was supposed to happen.”

And that ruins it. Because she can’t let herself be a miracle. Not when she’s already built herself as a myth. But then he touches her hand. Not possessively. Not casually. Just gently. Like someone pressing a page closed. She wants to believe he’s holding her like she’s still warm. She presses her coat pocket. The ring pop is still there.

“You know what’s scary?” she says, voice flat. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me.” She exhales. “And now that you do... I don’t know who that makes me.”

He leans in slightly, then says, low: “You remind me of someone I used to love. Or maybe someone I still do.” Then looks away, like he didn’t mean to say it. Like he’s not sure which version of her he’s talking to.

She pulls her hand back. Takes a sip of her wine like it’s his punishment. “You don’t know me,” she says.

“I’d like to,” he says.

“There’s something I should say.” She thinks of being five, wrapped in blankets, fake fever pressed against her mother’s palm. She’d lie so still, waiting for the concern to come. She got so good at it her mom started bringing her books. This feels the same.

She could tell him now. Just whisper it: I’m not dying. I just wanted you to look at me like this. But she’s too good at this. And she likes the way he’s tucking her in. So instead, she takes a sip of wine. Smiles. Lies better. It’s starting to feel like telling the truth backwards.

The bar is nearly empty now. The basketball game ended. She doesn’t know who won. The camera-pan of the crowd is casting white-blue light across their hands.

She’s been spinning the story longer than she meant to. The lie was supposed to stay neat, portable. But it sprawled. Got limbs. Found a heartbeat. He asked her what treatment was like and she made something up on the spot. Something about infusion rooms and cold floors and how everyone brings blankets. She said she brought a red one. She doesn’t even own a red blanket.

And still, he nodded. She wonders how many lies she could tell before he’d stop. She wonders if he ever would.

ACT IV: Security Breach

[PA ANNOUNCEMENT, 9:04 PM]

“Final boarding call for Flight 882 to Portland. Passengers must be onboard at Gate C4.”

They walk back toward Gate A6, slow. Quiet. Like the aftermath of something intimate, something criminal.

She feels it unraveling from her neck, that soft underlayer of borrowed meaning. The wine’s worn off. Her stomach hurts. Not from alcohol, but from attention. He walks beside her with his hands in his pockets. Respectful. Relaxed. Like he’s earned this moment. Like it’s his.

She wants to say something to undo it. She doesn’t know what. She returns to the hard plastic chairs, unfurled in a different way. He sits next to her. An empty seat between them. 

“You’re quiet,” he says.

She nods. “It’s a lot,” she says. “Being seen like this.” She imagines dying right here just to prove the lie wasn’t one. A performance so full of grief it loops back into truth. She opens her Notes App and types, ‘If this were real, I’d tell you I’m scared.’ Then deletes it. Not because it isn’t true. Because it is.

He nods too. Then says, “I meant what I said. About it feeling… fated.” And that’s when it splits.

She laughs. But it’s not a laugh. It’s something cracked and reflexive. Like a mirror throwing up its hands. “Jesus Christ,” she says.“You think this is fate?”

He blinks. Confused. Concerned. But still leaning in.

“I told you I was dying, and you turned it into a fucking meet-cute.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t—”

“No,” she cuts in. “Don’t apologize. This is my fault.”

And then she does it. She ruins it. Because that’s what she came here to do. 

“I lied. I’m not sick. I just needed you to believe something tragic.”

Silence. Actual silence. Not the gentle kind. The electric kind. Like before a fire alarm.

She doesn’t look at him. She keeps her eyes on the blinking gate sign. “I just wanted someone to care,” she says. “And you did.”

Now she looks. He’s gone pale, knuckles getting whiter around his rolled up Post. “Why would you do that to someone?” he asks. His voice is soft. That’s what makes it violent. 

She looks at him. “You said people only deserve the truth sometimes.” A beat. “This was one of the other times.”

“Because it worked.” She wants to cry but won’t let herself. Not now. Not in front of someone who already offered her reverence. “You like people better when they’re dying. You don’t want to know me alive. And the worst part? I think I felt better after. You looked at me like I was holy. It stopped being pretend. It started becoming skin. No one’s ever done that before.”

“Because I believed you,” he says.

She nods. “Exactly.”

And that’s when he stands up. Not quickly. Not angrily. He places his newspaper on the carpeted floor, lining it up precisely on an angry red line, like it’s a crosshair and he’s got one bullet left. 

“You’re lucky it was me who sat next to you. There are worse kinds of men to lie to. Some of them would’ve loved you for it.” She feels something cold and bright open in her stomach. This is the moment the fantasy ruptures. Not because he’s wrong. But because he might be right.

“Take care,” he says. And walks away. He does not look back.

She watches him go. Not for long. Just long enough to remember it.

She pictures his next flight. Telling the story to a stranger. How he once met a dying woman who made him believe in something again.

ACT V: Final Boarding Call

[PA ANNOUNCEMENT, 10:04 PM]

“Final boarding for Flight 882 to Portland. Gate A6. Doors will be closing shortly.”

Nora is alone again. The chairs have emptied. The FaceTime man is gone. The little girl and her mother are gone. So is Daniel. She thinks of the voicemail. What if she missed her chance to be ruined beautifully?

Her phone is at 4%. No charger. No plan. The gate sign blinking ON TIME above a plane she never meant to board. She just bought the ticket and showed up, because pretending to leave is the only way she knows how to stay.

She walks to the bathroom.

The mirror is cracked. Smeared with someone else’s foundation. She touches her face like it’s a question. Thinks of the bread-baby. Wonders, You were once held like that. Why did it stop?

She spits into the sink. A flicker of pink pools in the basin, faint, uncertain. Like punctuation. Not enough to mean anything. Just enough to question. What if I made the lie true? What if it already was?

Back at the gate, the doors are closed. The sign reads DEPARTED.

She unwraps the ring pop, ties the sticky wrapper around her wrist like a ribbon, then lifts her phone and takes a photo of the empty gate behind her. She doesn't post it. She just saves it. A souvenir. Or a warning. A shrine to the version of her that almost got away with it.

She drafts a text… “I’m sorry to tell you this. Nora passed this morning.” She doesn’t send it. She schedules it. For three days from now. 

Her phone’s now at 2%, she powers it down like it’s the only thing she still gets to end. A pixel gone dark. A girl sitting still, pretending that means she’s free. Then lies back and closes her eyes. No pillow. No blanket. Just sleep.

She is not terminal. She is not in Portland. But she is still a tragedy. And sometimes, that’s the worst part. She thinks about that one line in the voicemail, the one that always comes right before she stops listening, 

“Anyway. I hope you're okay.” 

Then she lies down. Finally. Like the lie made space for her.

[kiernancore]

Terminal Illness, Gate A6 — a short story in five acts

Terminal Illness, Gate A6 by Kiernan Norman [5,800 words — fiction, girlhood, grief, lies, airport bar myth]

ACT I: Scheduled Departure

[PA ANNOUNCEMENT, 6:17 PM]

“Now boarding passengers for Flight 882 to Portland. Please proceed to Gate A6.”

Newark Liberty is underwhelming even for an airport. Terminal A is ugly in a way that feels personal, low ceilings, fluorescents flickering above low ceilings and blue carpet scarred with angry red lines. Everything smells like deodorizer, warm pretzels, and mean pennies.

Nora chose Newark on purpose. No one flies romantic out of Newark. No best-friend goodbyes at sunset. No lovers sprinting through the terminal yelling WAIT! Newark doesn’t send you anywhere. It deletes your origin.

She’s sitting in a hard plastic chair at her gate with a charging port that doesn’t work. She plugs it in anyway. Pretends it’s fine. Her phone is at 11%. She keeps the screen lit, watching her reflection fade out like it’s leaving first. She once played Emily in a college production of Our Town. She still thinks about it when no one texts back.

She wasn’t running. She was rehearsing. Her breath catches on nothing. She picks at her cuticles. She draws blood without noticing.

A man in a full suit is asleep against the window. His tie is undone, mouth slightly open. His bald, shiny head reflects the setting sun. Someone across the row is FaceTiming too loudly, about a dinner party. A baby cries. A little girl lies on the floor a few rows up, between her suitcase and her mother’s, curled up like it’s a bed. No pillow, no blanket. Just sleep. Nora watches the girl’s chest rise and fall like a promise that life can be simple. She wants to wake the girl up and ask, “At what age do we stop being allowed to rest like that?”

Nora tried to copy the girl. Same position. Same surrender. But her breath wouldn’t slow. It felt like pretending to drown. The girl’s suitcase is cracked open. Purple glitter lining. A half-zipped hoodie spilling out like intestines.

Nora sees it. Wants it. The color. The softness. The fact that it belongs to someone who doesn’t hate herself yet. She leans over slowly. Fingers brush a pencil case. Something with unicorns. Inside: pink eraser. Crumpled sticker sheet. One single ring pop, blue. She pockets it. Doesn’t eat it. Doesn’t unwrap it. Just lets it rot through the foil like she’s waiting to be caught with it.

The girl exhales. Rolls slightly but doesn’t wake. She looks away. The foil warms in her coat. Heavy. Like mercy.

She had a drink at the closest sports bar thirty minutes earlier. She wasn’t carded until she couldn’t tell the bartender what she’d like. “Something white,” she told him, while shoving her ID back into her wallet. Thirty-three and still ordering like a stock character.

The wine came already sweating. She held the glass like a child clutching a dead bird. It tasted like nail polish remover. She drank it anyway. Not for the taste, but for the weight of it. It burned once it was in her. Like her body was rejecting it, but not as much as it was rejecting her. It tasted like someone else’s mouth. One that never wanted her back.

But she liked how it slowed her thoughts, how her words felt like they took the curly slide down. Memories landed like flies, bloated and buzzing. Once, she pretended to be asleep for an entire car ride just to hear someone say her name. No one did. She used to dress up for imaginary events and wait in lobbies until her legs hurt. She sometimes swallowed cherry pits to give herself something to worry about. She remembers being small enough to fall asleep in someone’s arms and not worry if she deserved it.

She looks around the gate at these people and their stubbornly real lives. Their dinner parties. Their crying babies. Their sleep, untouched by threat. It all makes her want to cry. And she isn’t sure why. She imagines coughing into a napkin, staining it red. Watching them watch her. The horror. The sympathy. The way they’d lower their voices. She isn’t proud of the fantasy. But she isn’t ashamed, either.

Her knees are tucked under her body, a position that isn’t comfortable but makes her feel lithe. All the cool girls in fourth grade sat like that. With a deep breath and a second of blurred concentration, she attempts to unfurl. She grabs her beige Primark puffer from her lap and straightens her legs. She messes it up, finds herself, with horror, standing up on the seats, heads above her fellow delayed, her jacket hanging like surrender in her left hand. She steps down. Her knees buckle. She doesn’t dare check if the girl’s mother saw. If she did, she’ll never stop seeing it.

She passes a window on the way, glass darkened by dusk and fluorescent haze. Her own reflection startles her. She looks like someone who might be dying. Or someone who wants you to ask if she is.

She goes back to the bar. Orders another glass of wine. She doesn’t want to enjoy it. She wants something to hold.

A man sits two barstools down. He has a New York Post curled up in his fist, but it looks old, soggy, like he’s been clutching it for forty days. Nora has a soft spot for The Post. Her father always read it. Every salacious headline, every forced pun, and he’d save Page Six for her from 7th grade clear through graduation. There’s not a lot of situations reading about Paris Hilton stepping out of Las Palmas or guessing ‘Mary-Kate Olsen’ for every blind item can’t improve. She trusts The Post. She trusts those that purchase it.

He offers a small, polite nod to Nora. She reciprocates. He’s mid-40s, nursing something dark and probably strong. Salt at the temples. That specific kind of kind-looking tired that means he’s either divorced or recovering from something noble. The kind of man who gives good conversation to strangers, but is withholding at home. Worn leather satchel. Clean hands. He seems like the type who journals. Or at least used to. She can feel him noticing her. Not in a threatening way, just in a way. Like someone watching weather happen.

They sit in silence for a while. The squeaks of an NBA game on the mounted television, the occasional clatter of suitcase wheels. The world idles around them. She likes that about airports, how no one expects you to be anywhere else. It’s the only place she’s ever felt appropriately paused.

But ambient noise always circles back to ghosts. The voicemail haunts her. The one from him that hit like a live grenade. Better to wonder than know. She turns back to the man who maybe journals. A straw wrapper flutters off the counter, caught by someone’s boot, then kicked loose again. He leans down and grabs it, folds it neatly into a napkin, then tucks the napkin into the trash compartment behind the bar. He does it without comment. Without flourish. Kindness that isn’t meant for her always feels like a betrayal.

“Flight delay?” he asks eventually.

She nods.

“Where to?”

She shifts on the barstool, like the shape of the air just changed. Then, like she’s joking but not really: “Do you think people deserve the truth?” 

He’s quiet. Not because he doesn’t have an answer, but because he wants it to count.

“Sometimes.”

She nods. Like that’s what she needed to hear. Like that gave her permission. She looks out the window at the tarmac, where nothing is happening. Where nothing ever is.

“Portland,” she says.

In her head, the voicemail loops. “I’m in Portland now. I didn’t know how to tell you…” She didn’t listen to the rest. Just bought the ticket. Because if he was saying he loved her, she didn’t want to hear the part where he didn’t mean it. And if he was saying goodbye, she wanted to be gone first. She made it to the checkout page three times before hitting purchase. She never planned to board. Just wanted to mean it more than he did.

Nora speaks again, softly. “I have six weeks.” She’s practiced the voice. Low. Calm. The kind that gets taken seriously. It lands like a feather dropped in water. She lets it hang. She doesn’t blink. He’s still looking at her, but not in shock. He just recalibrates, like he’s been handed a different version of the conversation and is deciding whether or not to accept it.

He accepts it. “That’s not long. But it’s enough to ruin someone,” he says, just above a whisper. Then, after a self-conscious beat, “I’m sorry.” She nods. Like it’s true. Like she’s tired. Like it’s a story she’s told too many times.

“I’m not the kind of girl you think–” she starts. He cuts her off.

“You’re the kind of girl who’d let someone fall in love with her just to prove a point,” he says.

It’s not about getting away with it. It’s about what the lie makes possible.

ACT II: Unscheduled Delay

[PA ANNOUNCEMENT, 7:08 PM]

“Flight 882 to Portland is delayed due to incoming weather. Please remain near Gate A6.”

The voice is still far too cheerful. Like it was hired by someone who’s never flown out of Newark. It’s not a storm. Just fog, or wind, or some vague malfunction of time. Enough to fray everyone’s nerves without granting anyone the dignity of drama.

The bartender brings another glass of wine. She takes a sip and sucks it through her teeth. Daniel, she still hasn’t said his name out loud, orders whiskey. Neat. No ice. No performance. He fingers the rim of the glass. Round and round. She always enjoys diagnosing the pathologies of strangers. See? she thinks. I’m not the only one projecting.

“I don’t usually drink,” he says. “But something about airports.” Then, quieter: “I like the illusion of bravery it gives me.” Daniel’s hands won’t stop moving. Nora watches like it’s proof he’s lying too. She believes him, which is dangerous. Honesty has always been the fastest way to manipulate her.

“Lying doesn’t feel like something I learned,” she adds, swirling her wine, “It feels like something that happened to me.” She’s aware of how she’s holding the glass. He doesn’t laugh. He just looks at her like that’s the most honest thing she’s said all day. Because it might be.

She adjusts her posture. Like someone whose absence would echo. “Do you want to know what it is?” she asks.

He nods.

She lets the breath build. Then: “It’s a blood disorder. Genetic. Invisible.” No name. She used to give it one. But people Google things.

“It’s like my body is leaking me out.” A beat. “Like it’s been holding a scream since November.”

She expects pity. What she gets is worse: reverence. He leans in, not physically, just spiritually. Like she’s a relic. A rare species in its final minutes.

“Then why does it feel like you’re already half-gone?” She doesn’t flinch. But her throat tightens. The space between them cinches like thread being pulled.

“You know what’s worse than dying?” she asks.

He waits.

She might say: Not being missed. Being alive and still invisible. Loving everyone in past tense because it hurts less. She shrugs. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” This isn’t acting anymore. This isn’t performance. This is the lie colonizing her.

Daniel exhales.“If I knew you were dying, I’d still sleep with you. Not to be kind. To be remembered.”

“I didn’t know I could be seen like this,” she says. “Just by being doomed.” She’s never felt more loved. She’s never told a worse lie. And she means it. God help her, she means it.

For Acts 3-5

[kiernancore]

[kiernancore]

[kiernancore]

We didn’t bloom together the way we should have. We never eyed each other across neat soil; both self-conscious and self-righteous as we sipped the sun and, in quiet bursts, raced to touch the sky.

We weren’t planted by gentle hands in soft plots with room to stretch our limbs and shield our eyes, nor to bud in peace and thrive and find identity in both our own bold blossoms and as a pulsing piece of the whole lavish garden.

We didn’t bloom because we erupted. We running-start-swan-dived into stale dirt and were too close from the very beginning. We didn’t sprout up straight; we snaked and lurked and left no bit of earth untouched by our vibrant, stencil weed fingers declaring ourselves alive.

By harvest we were tangled beyond repair. By harvest I didn’t know me from you, and I liked it.

To be so entwined is lovely but depends on a balance we could only begin to grasp. To expand but not uproot requires perfect synchronicity maybe not beyond our years but certainly beyond our maturity. We spread out our emotions like tarot cards on a towel in the grass, and reflected in your sunglasses I met the silent pieces of me. In colorful, grim drawings those quiet, ugly bits floated up veins and settled under ribs. They stayed silent. Until they began to scream.

And you and I — we didn’t have the words, not our own words that we earned and burned while stumbling across months and plains, tripping over potholes and finding our feet quicker each time. We had place-holder words we sang back and forth and splashed around and bathed in. The words we spoke were profound and cardboard. We were just reading lines, sharing identical scripts and an ache to be seen so deep and desperate it was sinful.

We shared the humid cling of regret, which hung heavy in stuck-air auditoriums; its beaded sweat echoed, rolling down spines and turning blood to sticky wax as we whispered in the corner about the things we could say aloud while our minds never left the things we wouldn’t dare.

We were mostly ill-equipped. We joked about hurricanes; We didn’t survive the first storm.

I want you to know you really hurt my feelings. I want you to know you’re the first guy I’ve given my feelings to hurt. I want you to know I was terrible towards the end. And I know that. But you gave up on me.

You gave up on me at the exact moment I was giving up on myself. Even as my tongue stung metallic and veins pulsed so hot and loud through my eardrums that I felt I would explode — it was clean. It was all remarkably clean and sterile. There were no explosions. No shattered plates, bloody knuckles, or blown-out voices that scratched and rose in time with the sun.

Just a quick slash of rope — an anchor cut loose and left to sink; our secrets were set free to rust over and collect algae. We were suddenly off the hook for any vulnerability we might have spilled on each other in our fits of laughter and hours of sleep. A deep sigh of relief. A deeper sigh of desolation.

The moment exists in sad yellow lighting that must have been added in retrospect. I tweaked the floor of my memory too: at that moment I was not wearing flip flops on linoleum — but sinking, slowly and barefoot, into chilly riverbed mud as it turned to ice.

I opened the door, and there you stood. You knew I had been crying, and I didn’t try to hide it; it was too exhausting — running on fumes.

And I did expect something from you, anything from you, that might dull the singed-dagger plunging stab to my chest with each breath I gulped and spat . I wanted anything that might reel me in from the cliffs edge where my thoughts had carried me on horseback.

But you had nothing. I watched your eyes glaze over my swollen lips and pinced, glassy eyes. You threw back the melted, Picasso-esque mask where my face once was, like a quick, sharp shot of warm whiskey. Careful to avoid eye contact you slipped “fuck this” under your breath and started to reach for my hand.

You started to, but then after a second suspended, you let your arm fall back to your body. Head lowered, jaw clenched and you turned and fled with a new heaviness pushing down on your posture. It looked painful and adult. It looked like you finally felt the weight of our season. And watching you go, I shrank in lighter and thicker because I felt it too.

We are not going to get a happy ending — not with each other and not right now. Maybe not ever. And that will have to do. (Though I will miss your hand in mine. I hope one day you’ll remember being tangled with me, and it will make you laugh before you cringe because I didn’t like to be alone.)

If I wanted to be alone, I would just go home.

-Kiernan Norman

[kiernancore]

WREAK HAVOC ON YOUR OWN MYTHOLOGY

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.