A collection of journal entries
January 4th, 2022
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Could you turn my words into experiences, my ideas into words, into physical documentations
the things I experienced that I couldn’t put into words before?
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Do you think you would know what they sounded like
Do you think I will recognize my words when you give them back
Do you think we speak the same language in sound?
Would you be able to help me pull apart my own words,
help me understand myself by rephrasing my words,
making them become sounds
Is it cheating to borrow the way you speak?
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Would you like it enough that you’d ask me to sing
Would you like it enough that you’d ask me to come see it
to come hear it
to come feel it
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Would you know that I’m trying to do what I said I would do
And if you did would you be upset?
Would it help you with your own story
I guess you didn’t ask for my help
Or any help that is.
I don’t want to distract you
I can’t help but distract you.
Where are you?
I can’t hear you and somehow that makes it hard to hear myself.
I’m scrolling
I’m missing something
I can see my body I can feel it
But it’s never felt so limp.
It’s never felt so fleshy.
It’s never felt less like mine.
I’m uncomfortable in my skin for the first time
Not because I don’t love it but because it’s unfamiliar to me.
I’m not using it like I used to,
like I am used to.
It feels like that part of me is falling away and
I’m trying to catch it, stretch and find it,
But I’m scared when I find it and look up,
I’m only going to find that scratchiness.
After all this time of back and forth you still answer me,
reciprocate to me.
I’m scared one day I’ll have taken it too far.
I don’t think I could
I think I have you.
I’m scared to be wrong.
January 16th, 2022
Time passed like words coming back from a song you haven’t sung in so long but are familiar
And when you become aware of the time you’re reminded of what else you’re missing out on
I cried
Torn, overwhelmed by how much I wanted to be where I was
I never expected to be so emotional about where I was
I just knew I wanted to be there
I also knew I wanted to leave.
It’s always been like that with you
Too much to leave not enough to stay.
The first time you were silent.
You couldn’t reveal yourself to me.
I made you nervous so you lost your voice
The second time you knew I was special and so you tested me
Saw how much of the full you I was going to be okay with,
you knew I wouldn’t be okay with it
My chest tightened, you stretched
I told you to leave I tried to tell you
But you wouldn’t
It was different
You were somehow still listening to me
Or differently, listening differently
And so I was honest
And from that point forward I always will be.
July 29th, 2022
What can I call you?
Out of the few things I know for sure lately,
which of course is nothing, but I can convince myself otherwise, this unnecessary stalling to avoid vulnerable transparency, but I do know
You’ll always be my partner.
This title you’re stuck with forever.
That’s how the past works, it’s stuck now, back there, for sure.
That’s how language works.
But what with today?
There must be something between something that explains that we aren’t in love anymore but we do still love each other and also simultaneously that it would only take allowing ourselves permission to be in love again for the title that is stuck in the past to exist in the present, presently.
But your presence is what lacks and the distance blackened through glass is a reminder of the inescapable fact which first decided this nameless path.
So what can I call you?
On the phone?
Eventually.
An opportunity to seek a semblance of you physically
Pretending to oppose the only thing I can’t control,
my emotions begin pulsating
We are just friends who have phone sex.
September 16th, 2022
Time and time again I think about how the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me
is say
I can write in their book.
Evidence of care through observation of habits.
He regularly wanted to provide for others,
didn’t feel a possession of his belongings.
And while he loved to share things with anyone,
this permission felt special.
Intentionally permanent.
Although I am admiring this quality now, I do hope he feels protective of the book I am referencing.
My care squeezed into as many margins as existed.
He does have a tendency to lose things,
perhaps this leads to his ability to share easily.
He must have gotten used to things coming and going.
April 24th, 2023
Even after the first morning I started writing down the things he said to me,
just like I used to with you
There were a few things he said I didn’t write because I already have
The same things you said to me
I really couldn’t believe how similar
just the same.
When I told him he said it was endearing
He knew how much I loved you,
but he didn’t understand
I still loved you.
It felt so much like our start
He wasn’t able to be there for me fully,
just like you weren't
I couldn’t believe I was stuck again
I tried to get out and I couldn’t
I denied it and denied it and denied it
just like I did with you
I told him that second time that I didn’t want him. just like I did with you
Because I knew just the same that we would.
I just don’t know when to tell you.