A warm wind touched my face.
I walked out into the open space,
I saw a blurry, fading horizon.
Somewhere, you are,
I am here, after a sleepless night,
Writing another reflection,
Tired like an empty battery.

I do not like the masks that shout.
The fight over who is right.
I do not want an analysis.
I touch the bark of the tree,
I hug the birch with my arms.
I see its white pages,
Written with irregular lines,
Torn, fluttering in the wind,
Which I cannot read.

Her eyes look straight into me,
They understand –
How well they understand me.
The rustle of leaves lessens the tension.
Autumn will come soon,
The summer wind whispers to me:
This country, this language,
These people, these doubts.

This is not blind luck,
This is your blessing,
Purple, rainy months, a fleshy heart,
Falling hair, joy when relief comes,
Crying into a pillow –
So as not to disturb another’s dreaming
About the so-called reality.

Bare feet touch the ground.
I tread carefully on the edge of worlds,
To be both here and there
With my integrity.
I am everything and nothing.
I am gestures, epilepsy,
The belief that I see human thoughts,
Inconsistent with what they say.

Blue, sun, and somewhere you.
How good that you stayed.
When everyone was saying:
She is different,
She talks to ghosts.
You stayed, showing me
Your true face.

We lived for the
next drink; the elixir to
erase the memories of
a thousand cruel dawns.
It took work when we
were broken and bedraggled.
Creativity and thirst drove
us through the day.

"Do you have anything to pawn?"

"Hey, why don't we stop by the
old carnival guy's place, he's
always good for a belt."

"Big Brenda will you give you a
10 spot to go down on her,
are you
up for it?"

The **** we did to stay liquid smooth.
We redeemed cans for nickels, It took
hundreds to get a bottle.
In and out of dumpsters filled with
the most vile trash imaginable.
Me and those aluminum cowboys,
knee-deep in the filth just to
get a drink.

Winter was bad, frostbitten hands and
hearts, but summer was worse.
Something about the way the sun
cooked the trash had a hellish putrid
effect on the soul.
That smell was the seed of my
sobriety.

How distant do you feel from our ideal life,
and how hard are you willing to go, to get there?
You’ve got to pull a big swing sometimes, to get there, you know?
You’ll flourish in the aftermath.
What I’m carrying is joy.

Notes for an American student in Paris..

Be less intense
tone it down
pullback.

Enough scrappiness, hustle,
and intensity on repeat.

Sure, honesty is sanity,
but give them a better version
some ‘church girl’ energy, maybe.
win ‘em with winsome

Don’t welcome them, immediately, into your tense, inner world.
.
.
Songs for this:
Oh Honey! (I Love You) by Peach Tree Rascals
Nothing Breaks Like a Heart (feat. Miley Cyrus) by Mark Ronson
Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution) by The Bangles

Lies are like the man
Who planted a briar patch
And sat down to watch it grow.
Night and day, he watched it grow.
It came up with tendrils tangling
And suddenly he knew
He should have moved his chair.

It's the small routines that bruise the hardest,
a message left unsent,
a joke half-formed with no one to send it to.
Not tragic. Just unfinished.

There's a certain way the day folds now,
like it skips a line only I notice.
Coffee tastes fine.
Mornings still happen.
But something feels like it forgot to arrive.

Names don't come up anymore,
but there's a pause where they used to.
Like the world's moved on
and my memory's still catching the bus.

I scroll less.
Talk less.
React slower.
Not because I'm sad,
just because fewer things feel like mine to respond to.

It's not about wanting anyone back.
It's not even about love.
It's about remembering what it felt like
to matter in someone's day
without trying.

And yeah,
maybe that was once,
or maybe I imagined most of it.

Either way,
I miss everything
that used to feel
a little bit like home.