There's some pain in this. There's some growing up and moving on.
There's letting life go. There's endless cyclical comparison, I want to be like you, I don't want to be like you.
Here at the edge of the future there's fear so thick you can touch it.
There's a life borrowed. A bed borrowed. Friends. A bathroom, a towel, toothpaste.
There's a river and a racecourse and rowers and jealousy biting at the bone. Luck in sprinkles and saturation.
There's meeting the boyfriend, the housemates, the puzzle pieces of the past and the potential.
Somewhere there's regret. Of not being good enough, smart enough, rich enough, pretty enough, skinny enough.
There's some missing home and some glad to get away.
A deep breath and a scuba dive into a life that was only an expanse of water in the distance.
There's some letting me in, some sharing of stories, some secrets kept.
There's recollection, backward pedaling, basking in past experience in the invisible, unbearable weight of the years that brought us here.
Names remembered. Nights we'd rather forget. There's a newness brewing, promises of something else beyond this, just around the weeks that hold us back.
This year, plus this year plus these hours equals a key, opening doors, company cars and apartments.
There's a sinking. Right back to sixteen, to sleepovers and sleeplessness.
Look at us. We've wound our way here. There's pride. We made it from there to here, from somewhere to somewhere else.

I cannot stay
I must go
or
He cannot stay
He must go
or
He will not stay
He goes
He leaves me all alone

We spend this long together.
Then it ends.
"We" become a me and a you.

Listen.
Cars on the motorway speed past.
The fridge hums, the radiator creaks.
Listen beneath that.
Is that the sound of the sea?
Waves gently greeting the beach?
Or is that the hum of my ears when they hear nothing?

Beneath the noise is the sound of loneliness, the sound of nothing.
Silence.
I can feel it, almost taste it, reach out and touch it.
It is alive and shimmering.

Go to the city
Walk around
Feel the people, the heartbeat of the street.
Look in shops, museums.
Stop in cafes, drink, eat, sobremesa yourself.
See friends, talk, laugh.
Realise you're alive.

I walk through my apartment, up and down.
The same movements I have been doing for
days,
weeks,
months.

I am my own ghost.

She wants to write about something beautiful,
mountains, the sea, stars in the night sky.
But all that comes to mind is a jawline,
the smell of campfire in his hair,
a tattooed shoulder,
the bump in the middle of his lip.
She can only think about scarred hands,
a line of hair at his navel,
strong arms and soft skin.
No other natural phenomena compares.
She thinks about beauty, she thinks about him.