it feels like for a brief moment, we slipped into another dimension in which that was our life, a parallel world existing simultaneously as the one we are currently living here

we were those people and we are also these people which I guess means that we are so many different people living somewhere else right at this very moment

like the life I have here and the person I am here is just one beautiful version but now that I've peeked in through a window into this alternate life, it has swung open the door to a million other lives and avenues and dreams and desires

like some part of me is still there and hasn't made it back yet

like this isn't the me that's supposed to be here and the me that's there is the wrong one
maybe we are both mourning the other "right" life

like I should be sitting dizzy along the Boston harbor, a cool breeze and soft hazy light washing over me, my hands in my coat pockets and your head on my shoulder, a small smile at the corner of my lips, laughs loaded in the chamber, because everything feels so perfect that there is no way any other place in the world exists outside of that moment

and she should be sitting here, along the bay, watching the red sun set over the gulf, listening to the familiar song of the water lapping the rocks below, taking her ritual stroll of coming back into herself, and her home is quiet but not for long because she's counting down the minutes until the moment he walks in the door with open arms and an excited hello

both of these people exist but they can't together, and to accept one is to deny the other and neither feels fair or good or
right

and in that realization it is impossible to not think about all of the decisions that led to this life and not that one or any other one and how by chance, I ended up here but could have just as easily ended up anywhere else and that discovery is too big to settle into over a three hour flight and fourteen hundred miles because

somewhere I am sitting in a park in Rome, fingers sticky from eating peaches next to my best friend in the grass, and somewhere,

I am dancing on a frozen lake in Bar Harbor with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, and somewhere

I am back home, wandering the streets of the french quarter after a few glasses of red wine and a soft saxophone fills the silence in the distance and my parents are only an hour away and somewhere,

I am riding a bike through the cemetery as spring brings pink blossoms to the trees in Tallahassee and I never left

and I never met any of you

and these are the people that I always have been, always will be, never was, and never will be again

I have never been held quite like that
like that day in the ocean
you held me how the ocean held me
how it let me float clung to my skin molded around us
the hold the ocean has holds up

you kept saying the waves had hands every time they crashed into us
white foam clouding the way my legs wrapped around your waist when we went too far for my toes to touch
you held me and I felt light
my heart was weightless and my head was heavy dropping back over and over again
laughing up at the sky
looking into your eyes
the setting sun glistening off your skin and turning your brown eyes golden
the way I know these days are
golden

we pressed our whole bodies on the sand right next to the water and let the waves wash up over us and laughed each time we had to resign farther and farther up the shore because they were up to our ears
we pressed our whole bodies on the floor of the tub, my back against your chest against the white ceramic and your head falling back to rest against the blue tile your brown eyes closed chin up towards the ceiling
I felt so held when we pressed our bodies flat against white fitted sheets hands on each other’s cheeks your thumbs rubbing my hair out of my face staring at each other in silence still the waves crashing over us my comforter clouding the way my legs draped over your waist
wish I could hold onto those moments forever the way you held me that day in the ocean

'Souvenir' comes from the french word meaning remembrance. It is an almost universal behavior to collect tiny mementos while traveling, some tangible object that holds all of the intangible memories and joy that came with the moment. Souvenirs are a quite lovely sentiment when you really think about it - before the plastic and mass-production and tourism industry come into the picture. In Japan, souvenirs are called omiyage, which travelers bring back home to loved ones and friends as a sort of apology for their absence, a way of saying "sorry you couldn't make it" or "wish you were here."
Today, the top ten most popular souvenirs are ornaments, t-shirts, postcards, shot glasses, tattoos, sand in a bottle, fridge magnets, tea towels, key rings, and random gifts. My mother has chosen to cherish the seventh most popular form of souvenir: fridge magnets. Manmade refrigerator magnets were popularized in the 1960's for educational and functional purposes but very quickly evolved into fun and inexpensive decor. She has so many state shaped magnets from all around the US, and a few from outside of it.
The thing with my mother though, is that she has always been a self-proclaimed homebody. I sometimes worry that she has agoraphobia but I think most of it is just that she never really had the opportunity to explore the world outside of the dead end street she grew up on (and still lives on to this day). She was raised by her grandfather who was a merchant marine and traveled often during her childhood, but she married and had kids at a young age and never really had the time or money to go on her own adventures. She was a stay-at-home mom to my four siblings and I, as well as to all of the neighborhood kids. Her door and arms and ears were always open for them. Now those neighborhood kids are all grown and so am I and they're off having their own kids and I'm off having my own adventures, but we all make a point to bring her back a magnet from the places we visit.

The wide variety of magnets you can find in a single gift shop in every city surprised me at first. There is now an art to choosing the perfect one for my mom - I went to four different shops in Portland, Oregon trying to find the perfect one. I never found the perfect one but still, that's dedication. I stray away from the boring traditional ones with the state name and shape (although this type is one of the less creative neighborhood kids go-to) and try to find ones that will make her laugh or show her some of the culture or sights from the city instead.
A green-eyed squirrel from North Carolina, a candy skull from Cancun, the mysterious Bigfoot from Washington, a sailboat from Maryland, a front porch with a lamppost from Puerto Rico, manatees from Central Florida, and entirely too many Los Angeles cityscapes and Smoky Mountain bottle openers adorn the kitchen. So many, in fact, that she ran out of room on the refrigerator and had my dad mount a magnetic board in the kitchen hallway to fit them all.

I know it makes her happy to see all of her children having these experiences and seeing the world but most of the time it just makes me sad that she couldn't be there with me. I hate to think that she ever looks at them and feels like she's missed out on too much or that we held her back in any way, though I know she would never admit that. We bring her souvenirs so she can live vicariously through us, so that she can cherish our memories in place of her own. Even now that I've moved away, I mail her magnets from Florida as an apology for my absence.  
I rate them three out of five stars.

I am so afraid that the longer I stay in one place the more people around me will come to know and understand me and the thought paralyzes me

Am I pushing them away because I can’t stomach that level of vulnerability or does it really take just a few quick months for people to learn to love and then get sick of me

I want to run away and start again but I’ve already done that twice and both times it’s taken less than a year to start to feel that way again

Is that empty weight in my chest really called loneliness and why is it that heavy and how long do I have to carry this around for
how far across the world do I need to drive and how long do I need to disappear to remind myself to stop packing these insecurities at the bottom of my suitcase when I go

the sticky taste of metal,
lime,
cholula, and eventually
beer
hits my chapped lips as I hide a tender smile
watching you fight back tears and laugh at how silly you must be for it while talking about your past, thinking about your future,
how hard your dad was on you,
the internal war going on in your head telling you to make him proud by surrendering your own happiness.

your vulnerability pierced my HEART in that moment,
choked me up a little bit;
it's been a while since i've seen that level of sincerity in another person.
I wanted to freeze time and the people talking around us,
reach out a hand, and tell you:

you are safe to cry with me.

I have a habit of overthinking
hard as I try I cannot stop the growth of a thought
once the seed has been planted

(I remember driving to the city once
we wanted to take my niece and his nephew to the aquarium
the kids asked about the blanket of vines and leaves that formed wall-like structures on both sides of the interstate
we told them about how it was an invasive species from Asia, and that it spread all across the south and engulfed whatever plants and trees that originally stood there
the whole hour ride they sat in the backseat,
shouting "kudzu!" every time they spotted it out the window)

kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu

some places beg to be written about
the lighthouse at what feels to be the edge of the world
has always been one of those places.
the desolate trees stretching up to a gray sky, a birds nest resting, teetering at the top of a bare branch
the clouded water revealing nothing of its depths
the fog so heavy - it doesn't linger, it lives there
forcing quiet introspection
demanding stillness
from those who squint through the gloom

at other times, astonishingly, the landscape transforms
monarch butterflies migrate en masse and flutter on the milkweeds
the sun sets, a tangerine looming over the saltwater marsh
tiny ***** dart into their holes in the sand and slowly poke their way back out when the coast is clear

In my memories of this place
I am always looking down at myself, on my bike,
small,
coasting down the winding road that leads to the tower for miles,
keeping up with the kid on his rollerblades weaving across dotted yellow lines
All-seeing, in the act of storytelling,
As if I'm one of the woodpeckers perched in the pines