you are always the loser

only for the fact that

you are never satisfied with your own work.

When I was a teenager, I hated anime. All associations of the genre belonged to those who over sexualized the characters and ran like Naruto around the school hallways; safe to say not the best introduction.

It wasn’t until I met this girl, i’ll call her Katherine, that my mind was changed. I was seventeen, incredibly awkward (maybe even naive too) and the loner type. Growing up, making friends didn’t come easy to me and I longed to be a part of something so badly. I spent my lunches in the library most days, texts wouldn’t come through for hours on end, and my only friend was my older sister who was already tired of babying me through the gruesome process of being a teen girl. Life was boring and bleak.

Until I met Katherine.

Katherine was the total opposite of everything I claimed to be.

She was the epitome of cool. Everyone knew her name, whether they loved or hated hearing it. She had a carefully curated collection of vintage clothes, handmade jewelry, and patchwork tattoos all done by herself. Her room was filled with paintings she had done over the years, all impressive works of realism mixed with some abstract themes. She was years ahead on clothing trends and she had no qualms with people who commented negatively on her fashion sense. Every room she walked into shifted in energy, her coolness stuck to the walls after she left.

I remember the first day of english class, she asked me to sit at her table and I thought to myself “why does she know who I am?”. From the day I sat next to her, we instantly clicked. It was as if my physical body had found its inner soul. And she felt the same. We became inseparable; from constant texting and calling, to cliche matching outfits we were one.

Although I didn’t know at the time, I would be lying now if I said I didn’t wish we could’ve been more, and I would like to believe that she felt the same.

Our friendship felt deeper, more intimate than others I’ve had. Every argument felt like the end of the world, nights out manifested into unsaid feelings, and her pain became my pain. Regardless of the context, we truly loved each other for all that we were, and all that we weren’t.

Laying in bed together one night she softly said, “have you ever seen Nana?”

I shook my head no, prompting her to explain the story to me and its many complex characters within it.

If you haven’t seen the show or read the manga, I’ll give a short spoiler free synopsis:

Nana follows two young women who meet by chance on a train to Tokyo and eventually become roommates. They have the same name, Nana, but they couldn’t be more different.

Nana Komatsu or Hachi, is warm, romantic, and sometimes impulsive. She craves love and connection and has a tendency to throw herself completely into the people she cares about.

Nana Osaki is independent, guarded, and fiercely passionate. She’s the lead singer of a punk band and moves to Tokyo to chase her dreams. She often appears tough, but she loves deeply and can be surprisingly vulnerable.

They’re technically best friends, but their relationship often feels like something that goes beyond a typical friendship. They become deeply intertwined in each other’s lives, emotionally dependent on one another in ways that are difficult to define, and at times it feels almost like they are each other’s soulmates—regardless of whether that connection is romantic.

I didn’t end up watching Nana until I was twenty one, two years after the last time I saw Katherine.

Our friendship eventually ended in a blowup fight when we were nineteen, most of it being my own fault through lack of communication but some of it being pettiness. I cried for days, it felt like a true heartbreak, one that you read about in Jane Austen novels. To this day I cant hear her name or see her photo without developing a deep ache in my chest. I guess some wounds never fully heal.

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When I finally got around to watching Nana on a rainy day in December, I was instantly hooked. I don’t think I left my room for five hours that night. Every character felt tangible, like I had met them before.

As the story progresses, new layers of their very human qualities start to emerge through their flawed decision making and fear of honest communication with each other. It was immediately distinguished and decided that this was not just an anime; it was a rollercoaster of emotions, a symphony of friendship, and the harsh reality of love.

Reaching the final episode (spoilers if you haven’t seen it), I felt betrayed. So much build up had occurred between the arc of Hachi and Nobu, to her pregnancy with Takumi, and Nana’s yearning towards Hachi, all for it to lead to no resolution. Yes, I read the manga but even that feels unsatisfying and almost unrealistic to these characters. For months I swore that I hated the show, and it was a big disappointment to fans all across the world.

It wasn’t until last month that I was finally released from my spell of hatred toward Nana when I saw one of Katherine’s paintings appear on my Instagram feed.

It was a realism piece of a woman engaging in oral sex. In the corner, Katherine’s signature lit up like it was smiling at me.

Long time no see, I thought to myself.

I remembered when she would practice that signature in my notebooks, scribbling it over and over again while trying to perfect it before her self-anointed big break. At the time, it was just something she did. Something I would probably roll my eyes at before going back to whatever conversation we were having. But seeing it years later, attached to a piece of art that had somehow found its way onto my Instagram feed, felt strangely intimate.

And here we were.

Her handwriting was the most interesting part of the painting to me. Not the subject, not even the fact that she had become exactly the kind of artist I always knew she could be, but simply those familiar letters in the corner.

It was the closest I had felt to her in years, and I found myself starting to cry.

For a long time, I think I hated Nana because I wanted something from it that I had never gotten from Katherine: an ending. I wanted the characters to sit down, say everything they had been too afraid to say, and somehow find their way back to each other. I wanted all of the miscommunication, jealousy, love, resentment, and longing to finally lead somewhere. Even after reading the manga, I felt almost personally offended by the lack of resolution. How could you spend so much time building these relationships, making us care so deeply about these people, and then leave so much unanswered?

But seeing Katherine’s painting made me realize that maybe my frustration with Nana had never really been about the show.

I think I was frustrated because I understood it too well.

Katherine and I never got the dramatic reconciliation that I think some part of me had always hoped for. There was no final conversation where we looked at each other and admitted that maybe we had both been scared, immature, stubborn, or simply too young to understand what we meant to each other. Our friendship just ended, and then life continued in the strange and almost insulting way that it always does. I went on to meet new people, make new friends, fall in and out of love, and become a completely different person from the awkward seventeen-year-old girl who spent her lunch breaks alone in the library.

And I assume Katherine did the same.

But watching Nana years later made me think about how strange it is that we are taught to categorize love so clearly. You are either friends or lovers. Someone is either important to you or they aren’t. A relationship either lasts forever, or it must have failed.

But Katherine was never that simple to me.

She was my best friend, but sometimes it felt like that description didn’t quite cover it. There was an intimacy between us that I haven’t been able to replicate with many other people. We knew how to hurt each other because we knew each other so well. We could spend hours together without getting tired of one another, yet one argument could make it feel as though the entire world was ending. There were things that went unsaid between us, feelings that probably would have complicated everything if either of us had been brave enough to examine them too closely.

And that is what Nana understands so well.

The relationship between Hachi and Nana Osaki isn’t easy to define because some of the most important relationships in our lives aren’t. Their love for one another exists alongside jealousy, dependence, admiration, resentment, protectiveness, and fear. They can be incredibly frustrating because, like real people, they often seem incapable of saying what they actually mean. They make choices that hurt each other, sometimes without even realizing it, and allow circumstances and other relationships to pull them apart while still carrying the weight of what they mean to one another.

Watching them felt less like watching a friendship and more like watching two people struggle to understand what exactly they are to each other.

Maybe that was what Katherine and I had been doing, too.

Trying to understand something before we were old enough to have the language for it. Loving each other without knowing what to call that love. Hurting each other because, in some ways, we mattered too much to one another.

Seeing her signature made me realize something else.

For years, Katherine had existed almost exclusively in my memory. She was frozen there as the seventeen and eighteen year old girl I knew: the girl with patchwork tattoos, vintage clothes, and paintings covering her bedroom walls. The girl who asked me to sit with her in English class when I didn’t understand why anyone would know who I was.

But she wasn’t frozen.

She kept living.

Of course, I knew that logically. But seeing her name in the corner of that painting made it real in a way I hadn’t expected. While I had spent years replaying the ending of our friendship, Katherine had continued becoming someone outside of the story I knew.

And, somewhere along the way, so had I.

I think that is what finally made me understand Nana. The lack of resolution doesn’t feel like a failure to me anymore. It feels honest.

Life rarely gives us the neat conclusions we imagine for ourselves. People don’t always say the right thing before it’s too late. We don’t always get the opportunity to apologize, explain ourselves, or ask the questions that have followed us for years. Sometimes enough time passes that the silence itself becomes part of the relationship.

But I don’t think that makes what came before meaningless.

For a long time, I thought losing Katherine meant that something between us had failed. Now, I think it might be more complicated than that. We were young, we loved each other in whatever way we knew how, and eventually we hurt each other enough that we couldn’t find our way back. That doesn’t erase everything that came before it.

She still changed my life.

She introduced me to Nana, although it took losing her for me to finally understand why she loved it so much. She made seventeen feel less lonely. She made me feel chosen during a time when I was convinced that no one would ever choose me.

And years later, without even speaking to her, she managed to make me understand something about myself.

Maybe the people who leave us are not always gone in the ways we think they are. Maybe they continue existing in the things they introduced us to, the parts of ourselves they helped bring out, and the memories we don’t revisit until something unexpectedly reminds us of them.

Sometimes, all it takes is a signature in the corner of a painting.

Maybe we don’t need every story to have a perfect ending in order for it to have meant something.

Some stories simply stop while we are still in the middle of reading them.

And maybe the hardest part of growing up is learning that you can close the book without ever knowing what happens next.

The United States of America has a clear bias on who they believe deserves to live, and who deserves to suffer. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way Black children are perceived when they are victims of violence. Rather than being seen first as children who are innocent, vulnerable, and deserving of protection, they are viewed through the lens of adulthood, danger, and culpability. Their childhood is stripped away from them, making their suffering easier to dismiss and their deaths easier to rationalize. A white child is afforded innocence by default, while a Black child is forced to prove that they were innocent enough to deserve it.

This is not simply a matter of individual prejudice or unfortunate misunderstandings. It is racism. It is the continuation of a deeply rooted American perception that associates Blackness with criminality, violence, and danger, even when the person being judged is a child.

On January 11, 2013, 17 year old Kendrick Johnson was found dead inside of a rolled up gym mat at Lowndes High School. The death was ruled as “accidental positional asphyxia”, stating that he slipped into the mat while reaching for his shoes. Although, an independent autopsy performed by a pathologist enlisted by Kendrick’s family claimed that he died from blunt force trauma to the neck.

His death is widely believed to be a coverup for a multitude of reasons, one of them being how quickly the investigators were to rule this case as accidental regardless of the many inconsistencies of the story. Security camera footage of the inside of the gym has been confirmed to be tampered with, he was found with his pants unzipped and pulled down, his wrists had handcuff imprints on them, and a person of his size cannot fit inside one of those gym mats without being forced into there. If they didn’t know what happened to him, why were they so quick to rule out foul play?

The investigators and police force failed his case, but his family never has stopped fighting for his justice. In April of 2013, Kendricks parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson were arrested while peacefully protesting for answers to their sons death. The police were quick to act when apprehending two Black parents fighting for what was right, but not to arrest any of the white suspects involved in the case.

If the case had been different, and a white football player was found dead in the school gym, there would be without a doubt an uproar of people from not only the community but also netizens online, demanding justice for them.

Are you seeing an issue here?

The issue is not simply that Kendrick Johnson’s death was mishandled. The issue is that his Blackness existed within a system that has historically treated Black people as more dangerous, more responsible for their circumstances, and less deserving of protection. His age should have immediately made him a vulnerable child deserving of an investigation that took every possibility seriously. Instead, his death was quickly placed into the category of an accident.

We need to talk about how quick people are to root tragedies that happen to Black youth as mere accidents. Adultification bias highlights the ways in which society assumes Black teens and children are more mature and older than they actually are, therefore treating their tragedies as their responsibilities. But adultification bias does not exist separately from racism. It is one of the ways racism manifests itself. The Black child is not simply seen as older; they are seen as older because Blackness has been historically associated with criminality, aggression, and danger.

Adultification is harmful because it rids Black youth of the same care and empathy that other youth might have received in equally terrible situations. In turn, law enforcement fails to properly protect all citizens equally. This becomes especially dangerous when these assumptions enter the legal system. The law recognizes that children are different from adults and deserve different forms of protection, but those protections become meaningless when society refuses to see Black children as children in the first place.

The immediate assumption that Kendrick Johnson was responsible for his own death directly correlates with the concept of adultification bias. They are viewed societally as more mature and less innocent; in many cases of tragedy many Black youth are blamed for their situation as a reckless decision, confining their cases into the category of an accident. The question becomes not “What happened to this child?” but “What did this child do to cause this?” That shift in language is subtle, but it is deeply racialized. It takes responsibility away from the people and institutions that may have failed them and places it onto the Black child.

Many Black youth receive much less compassion from the media, and much less care from law enforcement that a white child would most likely have if they were in the same situation. Some unfortunate examples of this are the cases of Gabby Petito and Laci Peterson.

The widespread, round the clock national coverage of Gabby Petito’s tragic homicide contrasted sharply with concurrent and subsequent disappearances of young women and men of color in the same regions, such as Daniel Robinson, a geologist who went missing in Arizona.

The murder of Laci Peterson, a pregnant white woman in California, became a massive multi year national cable news obsession. The disappearance of Phylicia Barnes, a 16 year old Black girl who went missing in Baltimore, Maryland, shared the profound tragedy of a young life cut short under suspicious family/acquaintance circumstances, but received minimal regional only coverage and lacked a comparable national mobilization.

These differences are not meaningless. Who receives national attention, who receives public sympathy, and whose disappearance becomes a national emergency all reflect what society considers worthy of concern. When a white victim is immediately constructed as innocent, vulnerable, and deserving of justice while a Black victim is met with suspicion, silence, or indifference, that is not an equal system of protection. It is a racialized one.

The quick assumption that Kendrick Johnson or many other Black youth should’ve “known better” is extremely harmful because it completely rids people of being able to recognize there are many systemic inequalities that go into situations which black youth are disproportionately harmed.

This is why adultification must be understood as more than simply a social bias. It is a form of racial prejudice that can have real legal consequences. When Black children are perceived as older and more dangerous, they can be treated more harshly by police, viewed with greater suspicion, and denied the vulnerability that would otherwise make people demand their protection. We see this same racialized perception when Black youth are criminalized for behavior that might be interpreted as youthful or immature when committed by white children.

The consequence of adultifying black children is law enforcement failing to protect all citizens equally. We see a trend in which many Black youth are either over criminalized, for example the “Central Park 5”, or seen as deserving less empathy. These are not two separate problems. They come from the same racist perception: Black children are treated as adults when society wants to punish them, but denied the innocence of childhood when they need protection.

Kendrick Johnson and many other people in these situations deserve the same compassion and urgency to figure out the truth and to find justice. Not a quick response, and not a hasty answer that doesn’t take into account the nuances of such cases. Because by labeling his case as an accident, we not only sweep a tragedy under the rug, but we also accept the narrative that some lives are worth protecting, and some lives deserve to be forgotten.

And that is what makes this more than an issue of adultification. Adultification is one of the tools through which racism operates. When a Black child can be stripped of their innocence because of the color of their skin, when their death can be dismissed before their story is fully investigated, and when their family can be punished for demanding the justice they were denied, we have to ask ourselves what kind of equality America actually promises. Because if innocence is something that must be earned, and justice is something that must be demanded differently depending on the race of the victim, then the problem is not simply that America has failed to protect its children. The problem is that America has never protected all of its children equally.

charities to help support Black families and communities:

https://eji.org/about/

https://brotherhood-sistersol.org/

https://thrive-usa.org/

https://colorofchange.org/

though no one ever tells you they’re locked.

so you keep knocking,

certain that persistence will equate to belonging.

the moth circles a light

that cannot,

and will not,

love it back.

no one calls this foolish

only inevitable.

i begin to wonder if absence is simply another element,

like wind,

or gravity,

always there, never personal.

and yet,

some days

hope begins to sound

like someone else’s footsteps.

The body knows how to orbit

How to lean toward warmth.

How to mistake gravity for eternity.

There was a sun before there was a sky,

not above me,

within.

Buried deep inside the walls of my own fruit,

an unnamed thing pressing its slow gold

against the silence.

The sun taught my blood a different alphabet,

I became full of light,

before becoming full of wistful mourning.

No one told me his absense would have weight.

For the light left an imprint that the eye continues to see.

So I tread carefully.

Small stings of grief, with no where to land.

I do not call you child.

I do not call you a loss.

I call you my center, around an invisible woman.

And the day the sun went away, a part of me went with him too

Stuck in his orbit.

Inpatient. Then outpatient. Then discharge—not because you’re healed, but because you grow tired of translating your pain into language. Cutting toxic people out of your life. Missing them anyway. Trying to get them back. Failing. Learning that loneliness and peace often wear the same face until you look closely enough.

You spend years collecting prescriptions for survival, only to realize no one can prescribe the desire to keep surviving.

I woke up this morning convinced I had finally cracked the code to happiness.

I got into my dream school with a full-ride scholarship. I’m in a relationship with a man who is kind to me. Every afternoon at three o’clock, my cat curls up beside me as if love could be scheduled. I recently started playing pickleball. I laugh more than I used to. The future, once a dark hallway with no visible exit, now seems lined with open doors.

Life is good.

Life is great.

Life is overflowing with possibility.

So why am I lying awake at twelve in the morning, staring at the ceiling, hoping someone will ask me if I’m okay?

I’ve begun to think happiness and contentment are not synonyms. Happiness is an emotion. Contentment is a condition. Happiness visits; contentment stays. One arrives because something good happened. The other remains after the good thing has left.

Perhaps that is why happiness has always felt like a guest in my home instead of a resident.

I’ve always been deeply rooted in independence. Sometimes I joke that after I was born and cleaned off, I walked out of the hospital on my own two feet. It feels absurd enough to be funny and true enough to hurt.

Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that needing people was a weakness. If I expected nothing from anyone, I could never be disappointed. If I learned to carry every burden myself, no one could ever put it down.

Independence became less of a personality trait and more of a survival strategy.

Across different seasons of my life, I have endured struggles that all seemed to converge on the same target: my sense of self. People told me the cruel things I believed about myself were “just thoughts.” But thoughts are difficult to dismiss when life occasionally hands you evidence that resembles proof. Whether the evidence is real or imagined almost becomes irrelevant. The mind is an expert prosecutor, presenting every insecurity as undeniable fact.

When I was seventeen, someone told me I would always be alone.

I made it law.

Not because I believed they knew my future, but because it explained my past. It gave shape to something I had already feared. If I was destined to be alone, then I might as well become exceptional at it. I would figure everything out myself. I would need no one. Even if everyone else disappeared, I would still have me, and perhaps that would be enough.

But self sufficiency has its limits.

Hidden beneath all of that carefully rehearsed independence is a quieter truth: I want to be known.

Not admired. Not pitied. Known.

There is a part of me that aches for someone to interrupt my automatic “I’m fine” with enough certainty to say, “No, you’re not.”

I don’t want someone to solve my problems. I don’t even know if they can be solved. I just want someone willing to sit beside them with me.

Instead, I bury everything. I push each fear deeper into the sediment of my mind until the pressure becomes unbearable. By the time I decide to speak, there is too much to say. The backlog of unspoken thoughts has grown into something impossible to organize. I know no one else’s ears can carry that weight. So I spare them.

Or perhaps I spare myself the disappointment of feeling misunderstood.

The strange thing about healing is that it often looks successful from the outside long before it feels successful from within. I have become remarkably good at assembling the appearance of a happy life. And to be fair, it isn’t just an appearance. I am genuinely grateful. I recognize my privileges. I love the people around me. I laugh. I make plans for the future.

Yet every night, after the distractions have exhausted themselves, I am left alone with the oldest version of me; the one who still wonders whether she deserves any of it.

Maybe that’s why contentment has always felt so elusive.

Not because my life lacks goodness, but because I keep treating contentment like something to earn instead of something to receive. As though one more achievement, one more relationship, one more therapy session, one more answered prayer will finally permit me to rest.

But perhaps contentment was never hidden behind the next milestone.

Perhaps it has been waiting patiently for me to stop proving I deserve it.

I want peace.

I want to make peace with my life, with my heart, and with the versions of myself that only knew how to survive.

Sometimes I imagine someone finally asking if I’m okay. In that fantasy, I don’t lie. I simply answer, “No.”

Not dramatically. Not apologetically.

Just honestly.

And somehow that honesty becomes enough.

Until then, I return to the same places. My journal. My prayers whispered into what often feels like God’s unbearable silence. The hope that silence is not the same thing as absence. The belief that perhaps every unanswered prayer is still being held by Someone patient enough to wait until I can believe my own life is worth holding too.

Maybe contentment isn’t the absence of longing.

Maybe it is learning that longing can exist without convincing you that you are empty.

my chest chokes behind erratic heartbeats, the heat billowing into my skull.

Waiting on you, again

To awaken my soul

To meet me halfway

Your breath steady, cool, collected

Face infantile, body curled. Slight moans escape with each exhale

The warm cheek contrasts against my cold, goosed skin

A slight stroke satisfies the craving

And so, for tonight, I let sleep fold you in its quiet arms

tomorrow, may it be my own.

Femininity is not only softness, but it is rather an act of insurgence to be tender in a hard world. To care deeply, to take up space…femininity at its core is the courage to remain open and vulnerable. In relationships, openness is often misread as obligation. So many women learn to present themselves as a petal, not a thorn, hoping softness will translate into safety. But what happens when you feel as though you have fallen short, that you are not “feminine enough”.

There is a unique kind of loneliness that blossoms when the person you love does not see what you thought you were offering. It is the loneliness of realizing that their idea of femininity is a door you cannot walk through without leaving parts of yourself behind.

It starts out small with comments about your clothes, suggestions about how to wear you hair, or even passing glances at other women…who look nothing like you. These seeds are small but they sprout quickly, spreading throughout your psyche.

You begin to study yourself in the mirror.

“Do I look boxy in this shirt?”

“Is this covering up too much? Do I look like a slut?”

You check the way you sit, the tone of your voice, and the sharpness of your laughter. You notice how easily words slip out of her mouth, and how heavy they feel in yours. You start to wonder if femininity is something you misplaced or something you simply never owned.

But here is the truth: the problem is not your femininity, its their definition of it.

Some partners imagine femininity as sweetness without bite, softness without strength. They want a woman who mirrors their comfort, who tucks herself into the shape of their desires. And when you do not curve the way they expect, they see lack instead of difference.

Their disappointment becomes a shadow that follows you.
You grow self conscious in moments that once felt natural.
You shrink before you even know you’re shrinking.

Yet being feminine isn’t a costume you put on; its a pulse, your pulse. Sometimes femininity is loud. Sometimes it is tired. Sometimes it is practical and unpolished and entirely uninterested in pleasing the eye.

But in a relationship where your partner refuses to see that, femininity becomes a battlefield.

You try harder. You soften your edges. You mimic what they want. And each time you do, something inside you thins, like fabric worn too many times in the same spot. You begin to understand that there is a cost to performing a version of yourself that cannot breathe.

Eventually you realize that your femininity should never require justification. It should not need defending. It should not be earned. It should not be proven like a thesis to someone who already decided on the conclusion.

Because femininity is not something you owe your partner. It is something you owe yourself: the freedom to inhabit your body without apology.

If they need you to be a different woman to love you, then they are not loving you, they are loving an idea, a silhouette, a shadow.

And you know this now, with a quiet, bone deep certainty: there are parts of you that cannot be softened, no matter how you try. The line of your jaw refuses to blur, your shoulders square themselves even when you attempt to fold, and your voice will not thin into something delicate and fluttering.

Your body carries its own history: angles inherited from women who cracked open stone long before they learned to be gentle, a face shaped by truths older than cosmetics, a posture carved by gravity rather than grace.

You will never be the silk he reaches for, never the slow blinking softness he imagines love should look like. Your beauty is built from different elements, the kind that does not wilt easily, the kind that does not bend on command. And so you stand there, aware of the unchangeable architecture of your features, feeling the quiet distance between who you are and who he wishes you could become.

It aches, but it is an honest ache. For the first time, you see your own reflection clearly: neither too much nor too little, neither failure nor flaw, just a woman whose shape was never meant to fit inside someone else’s definition of softness.

And though you know you will never be “feminine enough” for his narrow, borrowed dream, you also know this: there is a strange, aching beauty in being built from edges instead of petals, a beauty he may never understand, but one you can finally stop apologizing for.

It was the middle of the day on a hot, humid, September afternoon in 2012. My knees were slightly scraped and dusted black from kneeling on the asphalt, the blame put onto the middle-aged man who would not take our aluminum for reasons that were trivial and therefore not worth remembering.

Our arms were engulfed in the white trash bags surrounding us in a siege attempt. 

The wrinkle in the middle of his eyebrows was being shadowed elegantly by the sun beating down on us.

My dad didn't believe in sunscreen; from this idea, my shoulders were bright red against the pale contrast of my skin. I knew that I would have to cover up when I went home to prevent the inevitable lecture I would receive for forgetting to do so. 

In the three hours we had been here, we hadn't spoken more than a quick tutorial and a few quips to the other. He was set into motion, determined to milk as much reclaim out of our trash as he possibly could. I had learned about recycling in school but never to this level of pious, only in passing, the choice between gray or blue. The more I sat there sorting through scraps I wondered if he was thinking about how miserable this was, or rather if I was being ungrateful just because I had to do a little bit of work.

His emotions were kept taught inside like a fisherman's knot far out at sea; and no matter how persistent I was in my efforts to unearth his disguised grin, he never let up. The slip never occurred, it was as if he was constantly in character, act after act, show after show. Each breath he took was slightly shaky, his mouth always chapped but the skin today was extra peeled. It looked painful. Does it hurt?

He was sloppy with his technique of separation, practically throwing the ineligible items into the middle of the parking lot. I thought to myself how littering was incredibly counteractive in this attempt to save the planet through the "three R's". Looking back, I see now that that wasn't his level-headed intention. 

Both of us are at eye level despite our foot-and-a-half difference, and there is a faint glint of something otherworldly in his expression. It was hollow, like the inside of these bottles, yet it provoked a certain kind of emotional gravity from within myself that I couldn't ignore. Looking back at me, I conclude that this feeling he holds behind his bright green irises is sorrow. 

What had upset him? Was it my lack of interest in our daddy-daughter date, or perhaps how often I was complaining about my thirst an hour ago? I couldn't help but point the finger at myself because inevitably everybody else did. I brainstormed ways to make him feel better but the longer I stared at him, the further away he became and any attempt of pursuit would prove fruitless. A joke? No, I wasn't particularly funny, but he was. I wished he would come up with something hilarious to break through the tension between us. 

Deep down I knew he wouldn't. I could tell by the exhaustion on his face, contradicted by his robotic movements. He wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. 

"Did you finish your bag?" the inquisition is thrown out to me.

"Almost done, I'm sorry," I bow my head down almost letting my nose touch the plastic as if to pretend I was invested in the task the whole time.

But I think he can read through me, something I can't say for myself.

It’s like droplets of water on tree leaves. Delicate, untouched, natural. Easy as some may say. It’s like getting the answer right the first time around instead of the fiftieth. 

The firsts of life, and the lasts of such. It’s like that. What even is that? 

What is the feeling of knowing what something unexplainable is? Intuition? Or perhaps going with your gut. Although she’s been wrong more times than not. 

It’s like waking up. Not when you’re groggy, or bothered by the third alarm of the morning…rather when the rest has paid off. 

Crunching your shoes on top of leaves in autumn. Snow landing on your tongue. Flowers blooming in between fingertips. Ocean mist making your hair curly. 

The feeling of impending joy as your heart begins to beat a bit quicker. Seeing their face after a hard day. Crying after a hard year. 

It’s the wind, the way that while you can’t see it, you experience its powerful fluidity throughout your whole body.

It’s walking home alone.

It’s like getting injured and checking to see if all 20 fingers and toes still work properly. 

It’s like realizing what you need, instead of what you want. It’s taking years to make that step. 

It’s like failing your class on purpose. Eating expired food. Leaving your stove on. It’s not wanting to change your habits, or wanting to change at all. 

It’s like fighting with the person you love most, and being aware of why it hurts the worst. 

It’s like hitting rock bottom, or at least the lowest you have been yet and trying to crawl your way back up. 

It’s like being conscious. Listening more. Talking less. 

It’s like the first time you hold their hand and the whole time you’re thinking about how sweaty it feels. It’s not caring. 

It’s remembering songs without a name, desperately searching to find the title. It’s being unsuccessful in that effort.

It’s like the sound of pianos, notes dancing atop the other. 

It’s like writing poems for the person you love, accepting the fact that they will one day be burned.

It’s experiencing the hardships to further appreciate future prosperity.

It’s sticking it out. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s like going to bed and noticing who the last person you think about is. It’s the dreams you have after. 

It’s jotting down gift ideas, and reminding yourself that money comes back. Sometimes. 

Like running when the degrees hit the 30s, laughing all along the way, letting the cold air puncture my lungs. 

4 a.m. rolling around and still talking about the possibilities of possibilities. 

It’s like opening my eyes. 

Its undefined.

Vague.

Inexact. 

Unclear. 

It’s like everything starting to make sense. 

It’s knowing one day it will. 

by cherrypit

Her steps

soft, delicate

lingering close

Breaths held between two souls

Hands brush past

Tension rising in our secret escape

Her warmth

brief

then gone

Words we swallow

Sharp in silence

Heavy in weight

Our eyes meet

Centuries of stories like ours

Bearing the rotten fruit of forbidden love

I search your comfort,

helpless,

unable to unwind in you

Cats quiet, soft pursuit

still

mouse slips from the truth

Silent ache beneath the skin

Loves cruel game,

Im drawn within