i can’t do small talk about climate and share my timid feelings, i force delay my texts back, pressing patience into place. like guiding myself to reality where i control how i am, which has never been easy. but in the challenge of acting normal in the prolonged stares at the beach, after the time someone held ice on my scrapped teenage knees, i prepared a novel then too. even then i lived in prose, never knowing how to be simple, small, consumable. instead i’m harder to swallow than the complete truth, i want to be like them too - carrying joy and ease in undertones instead of an AirTag for a brain, running lines before getting lost and like a three week trip in August, i’m still unpacking how to act right.