a swelling feeling

my oh my

I found your footsteps in the snow

I’ll follow them wherever you go

Disclosure

How did it get to be like telling a secret? I wear it on my hands each day and I hold onto it like sand you cup in your hands until it slips through your fingers. The words always catch in my throat and then when they’re spilling out they come so fast and foreign I can’t stop them or put them in order or control them. I’ll always hold my breath and hold them in until the last second or until you ask directly and there’s a moment of hesitation and then it’s done before I’ve even decided to say it. And then yesterday I watched someone confess it to a room full of people, with little warning but in a calm and measured voice, with the appropriate pauses and some flush in her cheeks. I strained my neck and watched and listened and didn’t learn a thing. I’ve always had trouble letting go and the release still scares me and I wonder that’s just the way it will always be.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Bon Iver

—Blood Bank (Live)

Ain’t this just like the present, to be showing up like this.

Something that scares me: the idea that I will begin to remember only through the words of others. Through the memories of others. Whenever someone relays an old joke she told, or a funny habit she had, I wonder how it is I didn’t know those things. And then I wonder how much I really know at all. The reminders and the tiny revelations are welcome and cherished, but they hurt a little bit too. I know it myself, and I see it in the expression of the person relaying the joke, grasping at the frayed strings of memory.

I want to learn everything about you but not to hurt you.

The wind is warm on my skin and it’s the most peaceful thing but still its whisper keeps me up at night and into the cool stillness of the morning. The wind stirs the leaves and stirs my thoughts and smokes like a cigarette.

When I miss you I might listen to the music that reminds me of how long we’ve been friends and I might drop you a line to remind you we’ve got a long way still to go. You’re on my wall and on my mind and when I really miss you I think about dusk and the dock at your cabin and the lawn chairs and the beer. Or long nights of questions and discoveries and that feeling when you know something’s changing.