an ending

I'm not going to do a retrospective. This year was full of growing pains and I'm not quite sorry to have reached its end. But ah, there's another year tomorrow. Fresh, clean, new. Give and forgive. Pray and then move. 

Party riotously, my friends. Enjoy the sparkle, and remember where you've been. 

And tomorrow? 

the gift

Sometime around fifteen, I was at a party. It hadn't really picked up yet; everyone was bored, leaning against the walls, muttering and sighing. Someone spoke up: "I wish they'd just get here already." The rest of the wall-huggers murmured assent. I leaned over to my friend and said softly, sarcastically, "Man, I wish people said that about me!" He turned and laughed and said, "Oh, believe me, we do."

I hope your Christmas was jubilant, if you celebrated, and that you got some sweet and exciting presents. But even more, I hope that somebody reminded you how much you matter, how much you're loved, and how indelible you are.

Love.

the same song, again and again

My current driving jam.

Tell me what the matter is, little man
I have a pretty face and I wear a nice dress
Why can't I keep you?

Wild Belle—Keep You

Spinach Salad, 9 o'clock

I've been in a bad frame of mind for the last week or so, the kind of deal where I lie awake at night worrying that I'll fail calculus and never find love.
 It's just finals. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I'm stressed and wound tight and not everything I tell myself late at night is the truth.
It's hard, though. I'm dealing as best I can. Lots of oranges, lots of hot chocolate. Flannel every day. In a week finals will be over and Christmas will be on its heels, but for now I am making a salad in this dim kitchen and trying to keep some perspective.

ice song

I'm in the library at school, in an armchair by the rear window, waiting out a cancelled class. The ice storm yesterday left the world glazed, and I forgot my camera so I'm trying to focus it in words. Out the window, the tree-covered hills are frosted and dusted, blossoming with powdered-sugar blooms in a frozen wave of still music. The pine trees at the base are white on green, peppermint starbursts in stiff overcoats. The mist sits like a winter scarf on the hunched shoulders of the mountains, covering everything and blurring the divide between the sky and the hills. In the far corner, the stately brick school building is nearly hidden, iced the same color as the trees and nestled within them. Creation hums with beauty. 

It's raining now. But inside, the library is quieter than it has been all semester. I guess people stayed home, like I should have. But I'm glad to see this. I'm glad for the window and the poetry and the quiet. I've been given a gift.

I'd give about anything to hear that song again

"That's the first time I noticed
That I was slowly
But surely
Coming back together."

The meaning of this song to me has changed since I first heard it. Now it's quiet humming across the parking lot, Friday evening, orange setting sun. Freedom.
My heart is my own.

Falling in Love with your Best Friend - Paul Baribeau

12.4.13

a Thanksgiving endeavor

(Trying new things.)

I hope you have the happiest holiday, full of laughter and kindness and fancy china (or paper plates).
Love.

Sunset, 5pm, 11/23/13

Between 4:52 and 5:13 pm.

I still sing for you

This is a song that makes me a little bit sorry. It's four thirty and the sun is setting and the two gold, sad feelings match.

A Part of Me by Neck Deep

the dividing line

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon."

—from On The Road by Jack Kerouac

a grayer beard than last year

I'm sitting at the bar in our kitchen watching my dad make beer. He siphons the dark malty mixture out of the metal pot on the counter, and it rushes through a clear hose into a glass bottle the size of my sister. He dips a bit of the liquid out into a beaker, and then floats a weird bubbly measurey thing in it. He mutters numbers to himself. I don't say anything, and he doesn't say anything.

 I like watching my dad do things he's good at and knows a lot about. It's the same feeling as when we're in the car together, and he starts explaining middle eastern politics for half-hours at a time.

"Look at it clarify already," he says without glancing at me. "If the whole batch ends up that clear, it will be good."

"I was noticing that," I said. Even though we're speaking, the silence isn't broken.

November Fourth

It's forty-five degrees today. Monday afternoon. I wasn't late for class, and I'm wearing the scarf my best friend made me last Christmas. It's my half birthday.

I can't make you understand how much better things are now unless I tell you about the hills, which have turned orange and yellow and red in the last two weeks, as far as you can drive. The setting sunlight hits them, gilding them brilliantly against the heavy clouds on the horizon, and I can almost hear the world singing.

Everything is rejoicing. I've joined it.

these days

So here's where I'm at.

My hair dye smells like raspberries, and turns my fingertips pink. It makes me feel powerful.

I'm making the best grades of my life. Studying so much that strangers have noticed.

And I've stopped pining for him. It was such a stupidly obvious decision, and such a good one. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I still get sad sometimes.

But I feel more like myself than I have in a year.

I'm nineteen and no one's in love with me, and I have freedom and a full tank of gas.

It feels like I'm on my way home.

I should be asleep.

It's late. I'm tired, and cold. I've been sick for more than a week, and the painkillers are wearing off again.

But I'm snuggled amid three blankets and a cat. He was uninvited, but he's purring so comfortably, and it's his birthday and it seemed rude to kick him out.

Tell me a story. Sing me to sleep. I don't want to be alone.

Goodnight.

river girl

I learned to navigate geography by the rivers. Slicing cities in two, coming from unusual springs, ever leading onward. Wearing down the rocks through eternal time. The German Rhine, the quiet Paris Seine. The Themes, the serpent, winding its way through London with its cool green name.

I was thinking about them today in class, as we discussed Emerson, the Great Transparent Eyeball, with his ideas about the sacred peace of natural things. I thought about the Potomac, my own river. Its long, sad history; its slick, oily waters; but also of the winter, when it freezes into great, creaking, mighty slabs, and it stands with a power and a peace.

I drove home late this evening, not a moment too soon. I was drained to my very last. But on my drive, I opened the window, and as I rounded a curve, I smelled pine. It called to me. I longed for home.

vivid

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(Click for big. Links beneath.)

9.18.13

I'm at school, and I connect with this.

seven things

Things I like:


Mushrooms.

Sad punk music.

The way onions smell cooking on the stove; the way they whistle at you to remind you to stir them.

Library books.

People who carry pocketknives. 

Lemon zest.

People who say "I love you" first.

Monday Night Late Lab

In last night's Geology class, we watched a video about volcanos. It was full of destruction, ruined homes, fires, floods. We witnessed people trapped in a mudslide, families running away from the ash, and photographs of scientists killed in their research. Toward the end, there was a brief shot of two cats floating down a flooded street on some wreckage. And the whole class said, "Awwww."

I'm wondering why it was the cats that hit our emotions, and not the people. It's something I don't understand.

getting it together

Maybe someday soon I'll get myself a marmalade-colored kitten, happy and adventurous.

Maybe I'll get a pony-sized dog, with big paws and melty eyes.

Maybe someday soon I'll get a tiny tattoo.

Maybe I'll meet new people, people who light up when they talk about strange, specific things.

Maybe I'll find people to play music with. 

Maybe I'll start writing poetry again.

There's new tea to try, and watercolors to buy, and books to read. There's blankets and flannel shirts and postcards to send.

Maybe I'll get my ease back. 

Maybe someday soon.

(Two days ago, my best friend asked me if I was okay. And, yet again, he proved himself a better listener and a better friend than I ever dared to hope for. I love him more than I can elucidate. But maybe he'll read this, and know how much it meant.)

some self-indulgent emoting, with an emphasis on being loved and how to love in return

In the middle of last week, my friend left me a voicemail, and by the end of it I was crying in the middle of the kitchen. Sometimes the love of people is too much -- I know I don't deserve it and I don't know what to do with it. I've scarcely picked up my phone since. I'm afraid of electrocution.

A few weeks ago, a friend's mom came up to me in church. She smiled straight into my eyes and said, "How are you?" She ruffled the back of my hair softly. I haven't been able to get the incident out of my head.

Lately, someone I love very much has been causing me pain. And I'm trying to figure out how to react to it. My first instinct is to curl up into a tiny ball with my armor on the outside, like the roly-polys I played with as a kid. My first instinct is to get cold and hard, and act like it doesn't hurt at all.

Being loved by other people makes me acutely uncomfortable. But the opposite hurts in a different way. I'm doing my best not to steel myself against either kind of pain. I want to be soft. I want to love as deeply as I can.

(If you have any advice, let me know.)

a remedy

1. Stop refreshing facebook. Log out. Turn off your phone. You will not feel better for its silence.

2. Come to terms with the fact that sometimes you will miss people more than they miss you. Remind yourself that this is not weakness.

3. Acknowledge your loneliness. Refuse to feel empty.

4. Remember that time passes. Think of happier things. You are worth loving, and people are eager to love you. Let them show you.

5. Love them back. Soft hearts may dent, but granite hearts will shatter. Forgive, again and again, and do not let yourself flinch away from the antiseptic sting.

6. Pray. You don't have to hold the world together. You don't have to hold yourself together. Find rest, and know that regardless of loneliness, of hurt, of unrequited caring, you are infinitely treasured.

(I went away. I saw the two people I've written about more than any others, and it was good. Now I've returned, and these are the words I need to be reminded of. How has your week been?

Love.)

curious happiness

"Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine."

- from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

8.5.13

a biscuit dream

Come over and make biscuits with me. Knead them, let them rise. Brush my arm with your floury fingers. (I don't want to go out, but I don't want to be alone.) Let the yeast grow. Listen to the music. We can talk about new bands, and our favorite funny movies, and places we still want to go. Let the timer surprise us into laughter. Dough in the oven, and everything smells like heaven. I sit on the counter with my feet swinging. We wait. Biscuits on the counter, steaming, I get out the butter, the honey, the jam. You hold the refrigerator door open for me. Knives. Napkins. Crack them open, watch them steam. Watch the butter slip liquid and golden into the tiny biscuit-hollows.

Friends and biscuits. That's all I want today.

cloudy days

"Sweet pretty happy girl," you said on that bright morning, and for a moment, I felt like something of shining value.

Sometimes I wonder how you see me now. If I'm worth less to you because the thunderclouds have covered my face.

I'm still here, you know. Behind the stormy grey, I'm still shining. Maybe it's harder for you to see. Maybe you've given up on me.

But you don't determine the sum of my worth. If I have dimmed in your eyes, it's a symptom of your vision, not a lessening of my strength.

I may be sad, but I have joy. I may be scared, but I have hope.

My God is the ruler of peace and storms alike. Even if you walk away, I will not be alone. Someday I will be free again. I will be warm. I will shine with a strength you've never seen before.

(You can put up your umbrella and wait for fairer weather. It will hurt me. But I will not fault you.)

(In spite of rain, I will always love you.)

stars

Milky Way over the Alps by Leonardo Orazi

unwritable things

I'm thinking about people who don't write. I wonder what it's like to feel emotion without having to put it into words. How does it work? Where does it go?

When writers fall in love, they keep it all. Pages and pages of sprawling metaphors bleed out: letters and poems and secret confessions, things for the world and things for no one else. It's as though by capturing the sparks on paper, we imagine that they will always remain the same.

But what about the others? Those people who don't write -- what do they do when they fall in love? If they don't try to cage their feelings behind black and white bars, do they send them out in the world? Do they give them away? Do they live them? And does that make them better people?

If you have answers, tell me.

Show me.

ten things

1. Freckled knees
2. Sister kisses
3. New books
4. New people to talk about books with
5. Pyrotechnics
6. Haircuts
7. Comic books
8. New words
9. Summer storms
10. Watermelon

7.2.13

the sorry truth

Here's the sorry truth.

I'm afraid I won't be pretty if I cut off my hair.

(Ooh, it looks bad when I say it out there in the open.)

But here's a fact:

I'm going to cut it anyway.

Maybe it won't make me any stronger.

But maybe it's a needed change.

(This is stupid. I know it. You know it. Vanity, the whole ordeal. It's just hair.)

I'm not sure why I felt I needed to say this so badly. 

But here it is.

cheers

I want to talk to you about happy things.

Tell me about the best view you've ever seen, and the journey you took to get there.
Let's compare favorite childhood TV shows.
Do you remember waiting for the Deathly Hallows to come out?
What's your favorite ice cream flavor?
I want to tell you about the life-changing grilled cheese sandwich I made myself earlier this week.
Gardens we've grown, childhood crushes, favorite amusement park rides. Christmas traditions. The best birthday you ever had. The number of Hannah Montana songs you once owned (and be honest).

Essentially, I want to share the conversational equivalent of Skittles with you. A rainbow in your hand. Something fizzy, like soda pop in the summer. No sadness allowed.

(This picture makes me happy.)

a constant

Sometimes I feel as though one thing I say to those I love, in every stupid conversation, every stupid thing I've written -- the one thing I never stop saying is

please stay.

Vampire Gastelbrau

Vampire Gastelbrau from Hannah Ayoubi on Vimeo.

 This made my day!

recovery

At 4:54 AM, I woke up in a bed that wasn't mine, atop a lopsided mound of pillows and beneath a throw blanket. The light was on and so was the television, playing an infomercial about miracle cactus juice (first bottle free! with a small charge for shipping and handling). Between the blanket and the pillow, my left leg burned with a sharp, piercing ache. At some point I had fallen asleep, somewhere near the end of Sixteen Candles, when my parents were still in the room with me. When I woke up, it had ended, and I was alone. I turned the channel to House Hunters International and fell asleep again. That was hours prior. Now, I heaved myself up to get some water and take more painkillers. I was struck by a sudden, intense stab of loneliness. The house was dark and quiet. I wanted to talk to someone, but 5 AM is a ghost's hour: too late even for the night owls, too early for the early risers. My phone, in bed beside me, was dark and silent. There was nothing to do but change the channel again, try to find a narrative to drive out the isolation.

And there's the thing about pain: you have to deal with it alone. That's how you get stronger. That's how you heal.

(It was a jellyfish, the last day at the beach. It hurt a lot. I was a wimp. But overall, the week was good! How was yours?)

and thus, summer breaks.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the beach. I'm hoping to come back a little more settled, a little more focused.

(I have a list of things I've recently written and declined to publish. I need to get my groove back.)

I've been making new playlists of old music, and music I didn't know I had. It feels like a change of perspective.

(I'm hoping the writing comes back, too. There are things I'm trying to say that I can't, quite, yet.)

It's June. (I've needed it.) I'll be back in a week. Until then, I hope for some quiet adventures. (For you and me both.)

Love.

a weakness

One of my fears is that one day, some boy will discover my inherent weakness for sweetly sappy love songs and use it against me. But until then: this is one of my favorites.


Someday Some Morning Sometime - Billy Bragg and Wilco

5.4.13

frantically written about nothing in particular

It's 10:39 and I'm making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I'm sandwiched between finals and trying not to lose my head.

My birthday is on Saturday, and I've been trying to ignore it.

I wrote something earlier that I intended to share, but it's funny how the way you intend to write words is sometimes not the way in which the words want to be written. It turned into the kind of thing I can't share with anyone.

That's all. I need to go to bed.

Good night. Are you taking tests, too? Good luck, friend.

Love.

The Finals Song

I've been listening to this song every morning as I get ready for school. It feels like a kick in the pants and a hug at the same time, which is what I need right now.


The Competition - Kimya Dawson

are you gone and on to someone new?

I've got another confession, my friend
I'm your fool
I'm getting tired of starting again
Somewhere new.

Is someone getting the best of you?

This one too.

poem for a Sunday

What you want to say most 

is inadmissible.

Say it anyway.

Say it again.

What they tell you is irrelevant

can't be denied and will

eventually be heard.

Every question

is a leading question.

Ask it anyway, then expect

what you won't get.

There is no such thing

as the original

so you'll have to make do

with a reasonable facsimile.

The history of the world

is hearsay. Hear it.

The whole truth

is unspeakable

and nothing but the truth

is a lie.

I swear this.

My oath is a kiss.

I swear

by everything

incredible.

- "The Rules of Evidence" by Lee Robinson

metaphor, pt. 3

{My sprouts are growing. Maybe I am, too.}

Part 1.

Part 2.

Don't read this.

I am having a hard week. 

My hands hurt. I'm weary.

Sometimes I feel vulnerable, and I want someone to tell me I'm pretty, and competent, and worth listening to. Seasons like this make me feel as though none of these are the case. 

I feel terribly, terribly young. 


{I'm sorry, everyone.}

cats

The nice thing about cats is that sometimes
when you're alone and lonely and sad
they will come up next to you,
gentle and quiet,
and sit down and curl up
into a ball of purring warmth
and press their soft foreheads against your leg.
And they don't say anything,
but they know
and they're there.

a thought

"You're nice," he said. "You're like the smell of coffee, but not the taste."

I thought about that as I stood on the rainy beach, holding a cup of hotel-brewed hot-chocolified half-strength coffee. The weather was grey and cold, but the cup was warm through its little cardboard sleeve. It made me happy.

And I thought that that's one of the nicest things anyone has said to me in a while.

1 AM

Sometimes I stay up very late, feeling scared and inadequate and lonely. When I get like this, a little shaky and too tired to sleep, I sometimes read a book. Sometimes I write emotive embarrassments in yellow legal pads, or watch the beginnings of movies I'll never finish.
 Tonight I went downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. I took it outside, and sat down on the wrought-iron rocker bench on our back porch. I pulled my knees up to my chest and looked up at the stars. We live in the suburbs, so the stars are whispers, not declarations. But the longer I looked, the more stars I could see. Look at the stars, look how they shine for you. They have always seemed so friendly. Between the tea and the chilly night air, I managed to calm down.

(You said I should write something in that half asleep, half awake state that sometimes happens late at night. Just leave it up for 24 hours.
Why? I asked.
It will be funny, you said.
I don't know what you had in mind. 
But here's...this.)

together

Sometimes my girlfriends will ask me what I imagine my "dream guy" to be.
But I think that one of the few things I've always wanted is someone who will read books with me.

(Video from Foolish Oats)

an observation

One of the nicest things I can think of is when you find yourself laughing very hard about something, and someone you like tremendously is laughing equally hard with you 

about the same thing. 

blood and poetry

I memorized a poem this weekend. It was at the moment when bloody knuckles no longer seemed beautiful or valiant, but, instead, a far weaker symbol. The line between glory and pain is thread-thin, but chasm-deep. A line like a scar.

You do not have to be good. If you tell me to count the stars, I will chase the number, not the promise. In the vastness, I will lose sight of the mercy.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. Memorizing a poem has a vastly different character when it isn't for a grade. You read the words aloud a hundred times, over and over, tracing it into your skin and your soul. Sometimes, you need to hear the kindness in your own voice.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. You whisper it, sleepless in bed. It's a prayer. You get quieter as you go on. It's a lullaby. Meanwhile, the world goes on.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely You scream it alone in your car, make yourself promises instead of threats. the world offers itself to your imagination

Calls to you like the wild geese –– harsh and exciting You scribble it along the bottom of your class notes, heavy black ink lace.

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Your scars will fade with time. The poem will dim. There will come a time when your glass soul will need a different prayer.

But today, with the marks of a struggle still fresh on my skin, I need to steal someone else's words. I need to steal them and keep them for my own; use them to tell myself the things I haven't learned to say.

2.22.13

metaphor, pt. 2

Sprouts.  Or a number of other things. How metaphorical are we trying to be, here?

metaphor

You gave me flowers –– a whole bouquet, pink and white –– and I kept them in a vase on my desk. They lasted a week before they died. I kept them there for another three days after that, until they started to smell. I threw them away.

"You're so beautiful," you said out of the grey dusk. For the first time, I said, "Don't lie to get what you want." It was the switch that turned out the lights. Your eyes shuttered from the inside, and mine were candle flames in the dark.

I wrote you a note and folded it into a crumpled heart. I sealed it with the kiss I wouldn't give you. And then I tore it to tatters and shreds, ripped it into a fistful of pieces. I let them go dance in the evening wind, set free, just like me.

I planted my own flowers a week ago. I pushed the seeds down gently into the dirt, safe in their little pot. I put them on my window sill. And they've started growing, pushing up little green sprouts towards the warmth and light. They'll bloom with time and patience.
I don't mind waiting. I've found a better metaphor.

soft

By Lauren Bost

sleep

Vladimir: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot?... Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?...
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.
At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.

~ From Looking for Godot, by Samuel Beckett

{I keep trying to explain to people what this book is about, and I can't make them understand why it is as great as it is. But I guess that happens sometimes.}

impulse

Today I cut my hair. It was a bit of a impulse, kindled last night and fulfilled on my way home from school today.

Maybe it's the weather. After the past few weeks of cold and snow and sleet, today sprung up 66 degrees and sunny. I drove home from school with my windows down and the music up.

Maybe that's what's causing this restlessness. I feel punchy. I'm gearing up for a fight and I don't know who with or what against.
I'm in the mood to say no.
I'm in the mood to write graffiti in sharpie in unobtrusive places.  "It's okay." "Someone loves you." "XOXOXO"
I'm in the mood to write angry feminist literature.
I'm in the mood to fall swift, bubbling, head-over-heels in love.
I'm in the mood to get in my car and drive hard and fast to the nearest ocean.
Because this kind of feeling is eased by that kind of roar and swell and immenseness. This craving for life is stimulated through the living.

I don't know how soon this feeling will go away. I can't promise that I won't shake some things up. I'm in the mood to do that.

I might become a bad influence.

I feel like a lit fuse. I can't tell you what will happen next.

poem for a chilly Tuesday

A god can do it. But tell me how
a man can follow him through the narrow
lyre. The human self is split; where two
heartways cross, there is no temple to Apollo.

Song, as you teach it, is not desire, not
a wooing of something that's finally attained;
song is existence. Easy for the god. But
when do we exist? And when does he spend

the earth and the stars on our being?
When we love? That's what you think when you're young;
not so, though your voice forces open your mouth,––

learn to forget how you sang. That fades.
Real singing is a different kind of breath.
A nothing-breath. A ripple in the god. A wind.

- Sonnet 3, from Sonnets to Orpheus by Ranier Maria Rilke
(translated by David Young)

we are bound by symmetry

'This is the story of the boys who love you,
Who love you now and loved you then.
Some were sweet, and some were cold and snubbed you,
Some just laid around in bed.
Some would crumble you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly.
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart.
This is the story of the boys who love you.'

Red Right Ankle, by The Decemberists


I'm sick. I've been sick for a week. And if you showed up at my door today, with Inception and mozzarella sticks (and maybe a burrito), I would share my blankets and my tea and be your best friend.

This is a good song.

My thoughts are discombobulated. I'm sick of being sick.

But I hope you're having a nice weekend!

a champagne toast

There are hazards to befriending a drummer. You will be drummed upon frequently. Your knees, your forearms, the top of your head: anything within drumming distance is fair game.
For Christmas, he will use his drumsticks to knit you a scarf. He will make you mixtapes with metal songs oddly and wonderfully combined with the Jonas Brothers.
When you make scones, he'll smudge your forehead with batter before you're quick enough to stop him.

None of that encompasses the hazards of befriending a heavy metal screamer. He will send you the angrily beautiful lyrics he's written, and ask your opinion of them. He'll encourage you to write your own.
He'll send you haikus on scraps of paper in the mail. He'll give you tea and chocolate and music and advice. And in the dark of the movie theatre, when the White Orc appears suddenly onscreen, he'll grab your hand and bite it, and then grin at you in the silver light.

The very most dangerous hazard isn't any of these.
It's the 6 AM when you're alone in the airport with your feet propped up on your carry-on suitcase, and melancholy muzak dripping from the ceiling. You suddenly have to blink very hard, because 1,000 miles feels so real and tangible and solid all at once.

No one warns you of these perils in the beginning. But even if they did, it wouldn't change a thing. Sometimes friendships, like goldfish, grow to fill the space they occupy. And with that chance, 1,000 miles seems no less huge, but a little more golden.