It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy,
self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that
people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman).

I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an
excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it
kept me going, through that romantically baren and lonely year.

But we humans hope—we buy lotto tickets to dream on—though we know the awful math. We Gen Z’s seem to have our own unique brand of loneliness, born of covid and Internet-age experience.

My romantic expectations, sophomore year, were low—ok, unmeasurable.

Looking around was depressing. There were socially awkward STEM majors, jocks, frat men (sure the world’s laid-out just for them) and ‘CSOM Bros" (business majors more interested in parlaying my Grandmère’s money than me) and the elusive, emotionally reserved, ‘regular guys.’

But the unexpected can happen. We all know how crowded campus coffee shops are—the students move in and out in tides as noisy as the real, salty ocean. And then there you were, a rumpled, 25-year-old doctoral student—from another world—asking to share my table.

The loudest thing in that room was your sense of stillness. You seemed to be a new and distinct species, and as we talked, you seemed to somehow smooth my anxious edges. After a few meets, the thought, ‘I really like this guy,’ seemed to have its own gravity.

We somehow managed to thread the ‘too busy to care’ dynamic, and as time went by, you helped me channel my absurd, fiery, pastel-painted, first-love, early-twenty girlhood heat into something longer lasting, deep and authentic. Congratulations! It’s been two years.

Separating now, would be like removing the salt from the sea.
.
.
Songs for this:
Playing House by Kudu
So Much Mine by The Story
After Last Night by The Revlons

on a stage, guitars strumming a tune that
can only be hummed, for it has no verses
the songwriters, their tongues entwined,
joined as one, they can speak no words

but the crowd roars its favor,, sheds its de light, stomping and whooping it up, making
all the necessary noises, of two tongues, yes’m, entwining

kinda like a kissing, a little of hissing too,,
got its own rhythm, even the noises rhyming,
a rock n roll ballad with country western
mixed in, some say it sounds like Joan Baez
singing **** Jagger, or an Avett Brothers
serenade

words need tongues for formaytion,
tongues needed to speak, but absent
a common language,tongues do what
tongues do best,
intertwining, combining, licking,
making love noises that requires
two to be
heard
fulfilling
taste of two
blending
and we
though
silent
pronounce
ourselves
as one,
the loveliest
unspoken
vocabulary

Sabbath 7:31am Jan 11, 2025
<•>
For later, forecast proclaims:

snow showers for much of the day,
but in our temperate clime, rarely
do we get inches or feats of accumulation,
but it will be chill enough to turn my
heavy duty “Icer” navy coat to its
whiteout version, where the flakes
individually attach themselves to
to fat fabric for self-preservation,
displaying their distinct DNA patterns of intricate crystallization artwork on a
gallery of me…

assuredly, some will attach to eyelashes
and extruded tongue, perhaps inhaled,
in nostril and open mouth, as I employ
all my senses to retain, retrain, my brain,
to walk alongside a saltwater estuary that
welcomes every flake as a long lost son and
daughter, who has returned from its prodigal global journey around the world, to melt back into a mother’s currents embrace, returning
home to my patch of briefly occupied spatial, white palatial existence

I anticipate the taste of snow to be a
multi~flavored cone, souvenirs, accrued
while globe trotting, with hints ofAsian
spices, on a riverbed of Italian red
peppery tomato sauce, the crusty
spicy fabric of the fried chickpeas of the Middle East, the cilantro stinging of Latin continents,and pretend that my nature
wetted cheeks  are so because I cry & walk alone, sadness flavored, wishing I could partake of this snowy journey repast, with you by my side, for how much better would this global travelled whirlpool repast  of white ice and scented airs, tastes if it could be joyfully shared

but I am by myself,
sensibly refused companionship
by others, and my
voyaged meditation now,
well ended,
well recall,
Whitman’s Song of Myself (1) conclusion:
                          
“You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self”

join me?