I have three piles in front of me:

1. Donate

2. Sell

3. Give to mama

I suppose there is a fourth, and important, keep pile, but it has presented itself as more of a ‘throw it on the bed in hopes of organising it later’. Unfortunately, knowing myself, that ‘later’ definitely won’t be today due to my lack of concentration.

I find it very hard to let go of things. Every item has had its moment, its memory, and as a nostalgic being to my core, I can’t seem to let go. Whether it be the slinky dark olive top I last wore in 2023 when my baba told me I should sit up and improve my posture, or the dress I wore on my first date. Or even that top I wore the last time I felt like a child but was too stubborn to admit it.

All of these moments materialised right in front of me.

Clothing has always held great meaning in my life. It is a way of expression, feeling confident or even just feeling comfortable. But what I hold above all of these points is the memories they hold. How can I just choose which ones to let go of? Which ones are allowed to stay? Who am I to choose this?

The three piles (four, I suppose) in front of me feel like a weird farewell party. The party is full of the ghosts of the past, with no other living beings attending apart from me sitting with my legs crossed on the carpeted floor. My hands in my head, tearing up a bit whilst all these moments replay. Safe to say that getting overwhelmed quickly is my forte.

I tend to do this a lot, whether it be clothing or items or people. I let things sit; I let them pile up high until I am forced to face them. I have always let things fester longer than they should. The thought of letting them go sometimes feels like a defeat, an end, or a great loss that can transform into something worse. And admittedly, as a stubborn Taurus woman, I can find this hard to accept.

I wait, and I wait, and wait…

Until I realise I am the only thing present; nothing has been waiting for me. Not a moment, not a memory, not an item of clothing, not even a person.

I don’t mean this in a sad ‘pity me’ way at all; I mean in a ‘wake-up call’ way to myself.

It is good to wait and hope. It can be fun to be nostalgic. But too much of anything can kill that present spark life has to offer. The piles of clothing make me realise that I can’t let memories and moments be the only thing about me. Moments pass, and people change, and being stuck back there is no way to live.

The wake-up call is as follows: Things and people aren’t going to be waiting for you, nor should they. Live your life the way your heart wishes you to. It is a cliché, but it is true - you only have a chance at this version of life once; why waste it on hypotheticals or living in your mind, ruminating on the past over and over again? What is meant to find you will. Whether it be old or new. Waiting is a punishment at any age, especially in your youth, and you have been waiting for a while now.

LET IT GO.

So, as I sit in front of the piles of clothes, I accept the wake-up call they have brought. I choose to live, and I choose to let go.

It is always warm in that optimistic future. The air moves. Doors stay open. People linger longer than they should. The conversations carry on in the best way possible, no ending in sight. I am less careful there. I don’t rehearse things before I say them; I move away from measuring myself against some invisible standard I've blindly carried around for years. No questioning. In this light, I just exist in a way that feels slightly more extravagant, as if I have finally allowed myself more than I used to think was reasonable.

I picture mornings most clearly. Waking up with no immediate sense of accounting, what needs to be done, as if the day had started without any real thought. The movement and existing is slower there. Time becomes a currency I am allowed to spend, rather than manage and try my best to hoard. The sense of urgency is lacking; it's a perfect way to be.

The people there also feel different. They somehow present themselves in a way that is less entangled with the way I used to be. They don’t need to know my earlier versions, which makes everything feel slightly less interrupted. No contradictions and no need for explanations. I can let things land as they are, without adjusting them to fit a narrative I’ve already outgrown.

And there, I feel more visible. People see me for who I am. They can sense my true intentions and recognise me. I pretend not to care about this, but secretly it is my favourite part. Finally feeling aligned, when in other circumstances something may feel slightly off. I don’t have to try to be interesting, I just am. And I am happy to be so free within myself.

It’s not perfect, obviously. I don’t imagine perfection anymore. Truly, it feels lazy to, and besides, I don’t trust it. There are still moments of doubt, still stretches where nothing particularly happens. But even those feel different, like they belong. Like they're part of something that’s moving forward rather than circling back.

A life that doesn’t feel like something I have to navigate carefully and more like something I can move through without thinking too much about where I’m placing my feet. It’s a simple image, really. Sun on skin. A room I don’t feel the need to leave. A version of myself that isn’t trying to anticipate the next thing. And the almost ridiculous belief that it is not as far away as it sometimes feels.

Your biting feels so dehydrated –
like we’ve been talking too long in the sun,
tongues thick with salt and almost-truths,
as we sit there eating dry chips, wool-mouthed,
laughing at nothing, which is actually everything.

We drop our phones like a small revolution,
a careless protest into the river – 
watch them disappear without ceremony,
as if we ever needed proof we were alive.
“oh well,” you say, or maybe I do,
and it’s not really a rebellion, not really – 
just relief wearing the wrong outfit.

Because who cares, we decide, 
and for once it isn’t nihilism,
it’s something softer, almost holy:
just being here is enough,
just this badly timed breeze,
this shared dehydration,
this accidental freedom.

We start passing the stick of thought
like it’s something fragile,
or sacred,
or maybe just borrowed –
you take it, then me,
then neither of us holds it long enough
for it to become a burden.

Where did that thought come from?
We ask without urgency,
as if origins are overrated.
It makes us wonder what’s next,
but not in a panicked way –
more like choosing a road
because it’s there
and we’re already halfway down it.

Where to go,
what to think –
questions that dissolve
before they can harden into plans.
We pass the stick again,
knowing it won’t last forever,
which is exactly why it feels like ours.

Just for the moment –
just for now –
the only kind of understanding 
we have ever actually had.

No more than that.

Your hand brushes mine –
hand on the gun, you joke,
that’s a trigger,
no pun intended –
but of course it is,
everything is,
and somehow nothing fires.

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I know I am done with this place because nothing in it surprises me anymore. Not the streets, not the conversations, not even the version of myself I perform here. It has all become a kind of repetition I can do without thinking, like a line said many times in a play that has overstayed its run. But I am here, saying it again, hitting the same marks, and waiting for something to interrupt me.

I used to think moving would solve all issues; it would make me feel special, maybe even chosen. I mean this in a childish sense, that somewhere already knows me and is waiting for me. A place fully formed, and more interesting than wherever I happened to be. In my naivety, I thought there would be a moment, a decision, a ticket, a suitcase half zipped on the bed, and everything would slightly tilt in my favour. That somehow I could step into a version of my life that felt immediate and correct.

It really is a strange feeling when your heart and head know you are outgrowing a life before even considering leaving it. Everything starts to feel slightly ill-fitting. I look in the mirror, and my once favourite dress, which felt like me, now feels like an alien being attached to my body. I walk through the same places and feel a faint secondhand embarrassment, as if I’m impersonating someone I used to be very convincingly. My body is not comfortable anymore; it is begging to leave. A presence of half-packed intentions, with tabs open in my mind, combined with a constant awareness that I have already gone somewhere else internally, even if my body is showing up to the same room, the same tired versions of desire.

I had an idealistic view of ‘doing what I want’ when I was younger. In my mind, it seemed like leaving and change were simple, a choice you could easily make. I thought I could decide I was done with something and just walk away. And you could repaint the whole landscape in a dreamy afternoon: a new city, new friends, new self, without the consideration of rent, timing or the dull logistics that seem to multiply with age.

Now it feels almost embarrassing how much I want it. Not a specific place, even. Just an ‘elsewhere’. A different arrangement of days. The possibility of being slightly unknown again. I start looking at different cities, different flats, flights, even as if they are offering something more than physical things.

And yet, I remain. I would like to convince myself that it isn’t in a passive way, but possibly active in a small, continuous way. Every day, leading with the choice of not causing disruption, mainly because I have forgotten how to. In keeping my routines intact, which you can barely call routines, but instead moving through the motions, they might start to justify themselves. I return to the same places, say yes to the same invitations, let myself be folded back into a life I have already started to outgrow. It feels tender, handling it with such care, as if it might bruise if I am too honest. But instead, it bruises me.

I think what unsettles me is how intact it all remains. Nothing is necessarily pushing me out; there seems to be neither a clean break nor external pressure. Just this internal turmoil of insistence that feels equally as urgent as it does wholly ignorable. I feel split. The part of me is already packing, already gone, while the other doesn’t know how to leave the polite conversations and stop laughing at the unfunny jokes.

It is a weird feeling to be misaligned with your own life. Of knowing exactly what you have outgrown, but not yet having anything to replace it with. Making everything feel temporary and permanent at the same time, leading to its own sort of trap.

Occasionally, I try to romanticise it, which happens to be my defence mechanism when I am not ready to change something yet. I hush my anxieties with false comforts: this is a transition, a liminal phase, growing pains. But, honestly speaking, it feels much more like a pause, some sort of delay. Living in the purgatory where I have said goodbye a hundred times, but I’m still in the hallway, lingering. Hoping that I am becoming a version of myself who knows how to take the step and walk out.

It isn’t a relief, exactly 

More like 
you forgot to keep holding something
and nothing bad happens

You notice it later – 
in the way you are sitting,
one leg folded under
like you used to
before you started correcting yourself.

There is a glass on the table
you haven’t touched in a while.
You don’t reach for it
just to have something to do 
with your hands.

Someone says your name
and you don’t immediately 
start arranging your face.

It is that kind of thing.

A slackening?

An unclenching?

The air feels less like 
it is waiting for you
to justify being in it.

You stop checking – 
Mid-thought, mid-sentence –
whether you have gone too far
or not far enough.

The silence after you speak
doesn’t accuse you of anything.

You let it sit.

Outside, something is still happening – 
cars, people, whatever –
but it doesn’t press itself 
against you in the same way.

You are not inside it so tightly.

And there is this moment, 
brief and stupid
where you realise
you could tense up again if you wanted to.

Pick it all back up –
the small calibrations,
the constant adjusting.

It still is available to you.

But you don’t.

You stay like this instead,
slightly undone,
not improved,
just less held together.

Long enough 
to see what happens 
when nothing is braced for.

No one tells you where to put those.

It seems polite, almost insisting that you are above them. Or better yet, wholly freed from them. As if you were a housekeeper of your own emotions, and dusting away and tidying your mind from your darker feelings becomes a priority. But negative emotions sometimes don’t feel like negative emotions when you are actively living them. These emotions are layered, they are textured, and most of all, they are necessary.

For instance, anger. Anger can feel like clarity. The anger which rises when you notice something is wrong, and you’re not willing to pretend otherwise. It doesn’t have to be loud; it doesn’t have to result in broken glasses and raised voices - it can just be, and it can clear the path.

Why is that something that is so uncomfortable?

The culture we live in claims to value ‘authenticity’ above all else. It is strange when everyone wants the ‘real’ and ‘unfiltered’ version of things: the unfiltered photo, the candid confession, the organic relationship, and the messy truth – but all this obviously has to be within reason. Only if that truth can be shaped into something digestible, something that reassures rather than unsettles.

Authenticity, it turns out, is only desirable when it’s charming.

And there is nothing charming about resentment.

And yet, resentment is often a delayed reaction to being overlooked, or dismissed, or diminished in ways that are too subtle to protest in the moment. Instead, as if it were humidity slowly building until everything feels heavy and a bit unbearable. For the feeling to be dismissed outright, to label resentment as toxic or unproductive, is to miss the point entirely. It isn’t resentment that is the problem, but what it is pointing to.

But we aren’t encouraged to look that closely. We are encouraged to move on. To let go. To rise above.

“Ignore it,” has been said, as if giving it attention were a moral failure rather than a natural instinct. As if thinking about something repeatedly might mean it matters.

It is a violent act to repress. Repressing and repressing, expecting it not to boil over. If you are repressing, moving on, always reframing, and searching for a silver lining, you never get to fully inhabit what you feel. And what is the point of emotions if we are not allowed to live in them, at least for a while?

Sadness also has a bad reputation. Somehow, it is a malfunction of the brain; it needs to be momentarily fixed, altered, or at the very least hidden. But sadness, a powerful emotion, can be incredibly precise. It has the possibility to reveal what matters to you by showing you what evokes such a strong reaction. It forces you to notice things that would otherwise be ignored.

But we race sadness; we rush out of it as quickly as possible. We offer solutions before we offer understanding. It is treated like a temporary inconvenience rather than a meaningful state; then it is turned into something shallow and slightly embarrassing, when it could’ve been something deeply transformative.

Even jealousy, which is perhaps the least fashionable emotion of all, has its uses. No one wants to admit to it, which is probably why it persists so stubbornly. It’s easier to pretend you are above jealousy than to examine what it’s telling you.

But jealousy is rarely random.

It finds itself latching onto very specific things. Someone else’s ease, their success, their relationships, their sense of belonging. And while it is not always flattering, it is often revealing. It shows you what you want, or what you fear you will never have. Why is that something to suppress?

A moral hierarchy supposedly exists as there is a tendency to categorise emotions as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Happiness, gratitude, love – these are the acceptable ones. These you can seemingly publicly display without consequences. The ones that make other people comfortable.

Everything else gets pushed to the margins.

However, emotions are not moral. They are informative. They don’t exist to make a better person in the way people define it. I believe they exist to tell you about your own experience, your boundaries, your desires. Ignoring them doesn’t make you virtuous. It makes you disconnected.

And disconnection, strangely enough, is often praised. It is reframed as resilience, or maturity, or emotional intelligence. But there is a difference between understanding your emotions and distracting yourself from them to the point where they no longer feel real.

And the latter is less impressive than it sounds.

Constant positivity presents itself as something unconvincing, like an artificial light attempting to warm up a space. Sure, you can see clearly, but after a while it becomes intrusive and exhausting. You start to suspect that something is being hidden, or avoided, or carefully edited out.

I suppose, to me, life isn’t about being uniformly bright. It is about the corners of darkness that can linger, the inconsistencies in the brightness of the yellow bulbs. And sometimes, even that can be deeply uncomfortable when you have to sit in it.

And pretending otherwise doesn’t make it better. It just makes it harder to talk about.

What’s more, the pressure to remain positive can create its own kind of anxiety. The monitoring of your emotions begins with questioning whether they are appropriate and whether they align with the version of yourself you are trying to present. You become self-conscious in a way that has nothing to do with external perception, but everything to do with internalised expectations. And how strange can it be to constantly police yourself and curate your inner life as if it were something public?

Negative emotions resist curation. They are inconvenient, they can be messy, dirty, a pure form all bundled together. Arriving unapologetically, at the wrong times, in the wrong settings, with no regard for how they might be perceived. And maybe that is part of what makes them valuable. They can interrupt the narrative. They force you to reconsider things you would rather leave unquestioned.

This isn’t to say that they are always right, of course. Emotions, ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, can be misleading. They can exaggerate, distort, and simplify. But that doesn’t mean they’re meaningless. It just means they require attention, not dismissal.

It’s also worth considering who benefits from the demonisation of negative emotions. Because it’s rarely the person experiencing them. More often, it benefits the people around them, the ones who don’t want to deal with discomfort, who prefer things to remain smooth and uncomplicated.

If you’re not allowed to be angry, then no one has to confront what made you angry. If you’re not allowed to be sad, then no one has to sit with your sadness. If you’re not allowed to feel resentful, then no one has to question whether they’ve contributed to that feeling.

It’s very convenient.

I suppose it is also isolating. When you are told over and over again, implicitly or explicitly, that certain emotions are unacceptable, you get to become familiar with experiencing them alone. It is minimised, hidden, or translated into something palatable. Palatable to ourselves, to everyone else. And in doing so, you lose the possibility of being understood.

Which is, arguably, the whole point of sharing anything at all.

It is honest; it is necessary to admit that you don’t feel good all the time. That you’re not always generous, or patient, or content. Sometimes you’re irritated for no clear reason, or disappointed in ways you can’t explain, or quietly unhappy even when everything appears to be fine.

The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate negative emotions but to make space for them without immediately trying to transform them into something else. In recognising them as a part of the same system as everything else, which is felt, it takes away the ‘badness’ of an emotion. It is impossible to selectively numb one set of emotions without affecting the others.

Being joyful isn’t entirely separate from experiencing sadness. It often emerges in contrast to it, or even because of it. The same is true of relief, of gratitude, of love. They are all connected in ways that don’t make sense if you insist on dividing them into neat categories.

So perhaps the issue isn’t that negative emotions are unpleasant - of course they are - but that we’ve decided they shouldn’t exist at all, as we don’t want to face the discomfort. That we have mistaken discomfort for dysfunction.

And by making it seem dysfunctional, we have made something ordinary feel like a failure.

But there is nothing inherently wrong with feeling bad from time to time. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, or ungrateful, or doing life incorrectly. It just means you’re paying attention to something, even if you don’t yet know what it is.

At the end of the day, uncomfortable emotions are still emotions. And the emotions true to myself, however uncomfortable, deserve to be felt.

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Share sevdah snovi

I turned twenty-five in May, which felt less like a milestone and more like showing up late to something that had already started without me. The light was too bright, everyone else seemed halfway through their drinks, and I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to be celebrating or apologising.

Twenty-five so far feels weird; the teenage years feel so far away, yet calling myself a grown-up feels like a fraudulent statement.

I had this idea, for years, of the kind of girl I would be by now. I thought the kind of girl I was going to be was inevitable. Maybe I am unsure how, but I thought that part would come to me. I imagined having a signature ‘something’, something so identifiably me that no one, not even I, would question it. Instead, I have half-finished thoughts because of burnout, a distinguished talent for leaving things slightly too late, and a tendency to give my all to things that usually leave me feeling half empty. A constantly racing mind is what marks me as a person.

Twenty-five is surprisingly administrative. It is realising that your habits have hardened into personality, that playfulness and experimentation have toned down, and a weird sense of ‘life’ has cemented on my shoulders. It is knowing exactly which version of yourself you’re about to perform and being self-aware enough to hate her a little.

I spent my birthday peacefully, surrounded by love, which made me happy. Then the evening realisation caught up: I had to be up early and in the office by nine to perform, and it made me realise: it has been another day.

I looked at myself in the mirror and convinced myself I hadn’t failed at anything yet. I was too young for it to be labelled a failure and for it to weigh down my spirit so strongly. At that moment, I believed myself. I felt truthful in the most glamorous way, like maybe not having a signature ‘something’ wasn’t a flaw but maybe the whole point. Maybe the frankness and confusion were truthful, and that was the point.

I think that is what twenty-five is, in the end. Not becoming the perfect version of a girl I planned, but accepting that there is no perfect, final version. I am the one who is here and who will stay, however mundane it may be. I am still learning.

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Rather than it being in a poetic, carpe diem way, it is more in an obsessive, somewhat neurotic way. Without my permission, my eyes glance at the clock, my mind has already started on the calculations, and here I am, already mourning the hours before they have even passed. This has slowly become my religious practice. Instead of laying my truth with God, I end up succumbing to the devil on my shoulder and counting the minutes away.

There never seems to be enough of them – the usable hours tick by as if mocking me, laughing in my face. They know I cannot catch up to them, and they use it to their advantage. Where have they gone? The kind hours, when your brain is awake, and your body isn’t begging to be laid down gently.

I work, and then I am tired. This, unfortunately, isn’t a revolutionary statement; if anything, it feels too obvious to say and almost embarrassing, like admitting a very common human flaw. Everyone works. Everyone is tired. The mocking hours are a universal experience. But, there is a particular exhaustion that comes from wanting to make things and having no space left in yourself to do it. The kind where creativity feels like another chore you are failing to keep up with.

I idealise a version of myself. The one who comes home from work and just writes. Casually. She doesn’t need a transition period or a small lie-down that turns into scrolling in the dark. She doesn’t bargain with herself – just one paragraph, just one sentence – as if she is trying to coax a frightened animal out of hiding. She simply sits down and creates, because that is what creative people do, right?

But most days, I come home and feel emptied out. Used up in small, unremarkable ways. I crave to create and write, painfully, genuinely, but I also crave to lie on the floor and stare at my ceiling and not be perceived by anyone or anything. Including my own expectations.

What isn’t really acknowledged is how much creating depends on having something left. I do not mean just time, but energy too. Softness. A little excess. Maybe even a little hedonism. We romanticise the starving artist but forget that art needs fuel, and fuel, in this day and age, is expensive. Especially when most of it is spent getting through the day and paying the bills.

I find myself constantly wishing for more hours. Not for productivity, and definitely not in this new age ‘grindset’ mentality that makes my skin crawl. But, for space. I want evenings that do not feel like a countdown. I want time that isn’t shaped by obligation. I need to exist without always feeling like I'm choosing between rest and the thing that makes me feel like myself.

And there is guilt braided through all of this. Guilt for complaining. Guilt for not just writing. Guilt for being tired. Guilt for wanting more than what I realistically can give. Because, obviously, I can’t be that much of an artist if the pure drive of creating isn’t enough, right? Maybe I don’t want it enough? I tell myself I should be grateful, disciplined, better at managing my time – as if the problem is a personal failure rather than a very obvious structural one.

Sometimes I wonder if this tension – this wanting to create while being too tired to do it – is the truest thing I have to write about right now. My mind is too tired, too occupied to confess anything else. Maybe this is the work, not the polished essay or the finished piece, but the honesty of admitting that I want more freedom, that I want the luxury of not thinking of the hand on the clock moving and time passing by, and that even though I feel stretched thin, I am still reaching.

I admit, I do not always have beautiful sentences in me. Sometimes all I have is the desire to write, sitting there, persistent, like a light in the corridor peaking through the bottom of the door. And, I am trying to convince myself that this still counts. That wanting to create is not the same as failing to create. That rest is not betrayal.

Still, I cannot lie, I wish for more time. I want days that open instead of close. I want to stop feeling like my life is something I painfully squeeze my art into.

For now, I am creating in scraps. In tired honesty. In moments stolen between responsibilities. I am learning to be gentle with myself, even as I keep longing for more. And maybe that longing is enough to begin with.

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The floor finds me, more often than not. I tell myself it is because the light is better here, but truly, it is muscle memory. My body remembers this position, Legs crossed, spine curved, shoulders soft. The posture of a child doing something sacred, something the child loves. I unscrew the bottle slowly, like opening a secret.

The smell hits first. Sharp, chemical, unmistakable. It floods me with memories before I can stop it. I am seven, sitting at the dining table with my mama, newspaper spread beneath my hands like a kind of ritual cloth. Then I am ten, cross-legged on my bedroom floor, newspaper again spread. I am painting my nails too thick, too fast, the red colour bleeding into places it does not belong. I am thrilled. I am convinced this is what adulthood feels like.

No one tells me I am doing it wrong. That is the miracle of it.

And then, I knock the nail polish over. My carpet, now stained red.

Now, I know how it is meant to be done. I know about base coats and thin layers and patience. I know you are supposed to wait. I know you should not touch anything until they are completely dry. I know how to clean the edges, how to make it look intentional. But sometimes, more often than not, when I paint my nails, I choose not to know these things.

I let the brush wobble. I let the polish pool and slide and do what it wants to do. I choose colours based solely on feelings. Glitter in October. A pale lilac in the dead of winter. A navy that smells like chlorine and summer holidays and cheap flip-flops melting slightly on the hot ground. Colours with no purpose beyond delight.

There is something disarmingly intimate about hands. When you paint your nails, you are forced to slow down and notice yourself. Each finger becomes important, singular. You hold your breath without realising it. You forgive mistakes because fixing them would break the spell. It isn’t about looking good. This is about being present.

People talk about the inner child as if she were a project. As if she can be reached through effort, discipline, or some journal prompts. But my inner child does not respond to instruction. She feels seen when I am gentle with myself. She appears when I stop trying to be impressive. She arrives when I do something small, unnecessary, and kind.

Painting my nails does not improve my life in any visible way. It does not make me more productive. It does not make me easier to love. It does not fix anything, and yet, it steadies me. It feels like a quiet confession: I am allowed to enjoy things. I am allowed to take up space in my own life without having to explain why.

When I was younger, painting my nails was an event. It meant sleepovers, shared moments with my mama, the hum of late-night television in the background. It meant choosing a colour with no thought for taste or coordination. Hot pink because it was loud. Silver because it looked like treasure. There was no anxiety in choosing the wrong colour. There was only a want.

Somewhere along the way, wanting became something to interrogate. We learnt to ask whether a colour suited us and whether it was wearable. We learnt to tidy the mess, to neaten the edges, to make everything look deliberate. We have learnt to play into the presentation.

Late at night, my hands hovering awkwardly in the air as the polish dries, that part of me softens again. I feel somewhat closer to the version of myself who made things just to make them. Who did not worry about whether it would last. Who trusted her curiosity and choice more than anyone else’s opinion.

There is care and love in this ritual. Nail painting happens close to the body. You are touching yourself with attention. You are tending to something small and visible. In a world that asks for confidence and urgency, this almost feels like a rebellious act in its tenderness.

We should never underestimate the power of small rituals. We are always on the prowl for breakthroughs. For moments that split our lives into before and after. But healing, I am learning, often looks like sitting on the floor with a bottle of nail polish you said you would not buy because you have ten more at home, but you did, you bought impulsively. It looks like letting yourself like things with no justification.

When the nail polish has dried, I often feel subtly altered. Not in some grand way, but rather in a way that feels like my hands have been returned to me again. The next few days, I notice them constantly: wrapped around a mug, when holding a pen, resting on the table, tapping against my thigh. The colour flows through me, a reminder that I did something just because I wanted to. The inner child does not ask for grand gestures. She asks for moments of softness. She asks to be met where she already lives – on the floor, surrounded by colour, unconcerned with outcome. She asks to be taken seriously in her small joys.

The polish will chip. It always does. Life will intrude. It always does. But for a little while, there is colour on my hands and a looseness in my chest. For a little while, I remember how to sit with myself without distraction, which sometimes I find harder than I would like to admit.

And when I place the brush back into the polish, screw the lid back on, and stand up, I carry that with me. The knowledge that play is still available. That joy does not need permission. That sometimes, coming back to yourself is as simple as opening a bottle and letting the colour spill.

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Love,

Isidora x

This is me now. A little softer around the edges. A little more discerning with energy. I light a candle before I open a blank page. I stretch before I make promises. I learned that beginnings do not require spectacle. Only honesty.

I am ready for change, but I am no longer willing to sacrifice myself to prove it.

There is a particular fear that comes with wanting a lot from life. Not the fear of failure, but the fear of depletion. One which asks: How much of myself will this cost? I have spent years confusing ambition with abandonment – believing that to want deeply meant to bleed endlessly.

This year, in 2026, I am unlearning that bargain. I must unlearn it.

The past year taught me what it feels like to be hollowed out by urgency. To say yes with a clenched jaw. To confuse productivity with worthiness. I chased momentum until my body intervened, until rest became non-negotiable and solitude stopped feeling like a punishment. And then there would be times where I would sit, and sit, and hope life would happen to me because tiredness overcame me, and the thought of movement was torture. Those days were, more often than not, spent wallowing in the punishment. Somewhere between exhaustion and surrender, I began to listen.

Healing does not arrive as a grand revelation. It comes in small, almost forgettable choices. Drinking water before coffee. Cancelling plans without guilt. Leaving conversations early. Choosing silence instead of explanation. Learning that preservation is not selfish; it is strategic, sacred, necessary.

I am scared, yes. But it is a quieter fear now. Less theatrical. More instructive. It tells me where I am still attached to old versions of myself. It tells me where growth will ask for tenderness instead of force. I am learning that fear does not mean stop. Instead, sit down and stay present.

I carry a hunger with me into this year, but it is no longer ravenous. It is discerning. I want to make work that does not require me to disappear afterwards. I want a life that leaves room for surprise, rest, pleasure, and repair. There seem to be parts of me still healing from being too much or too little for the wrong rooms. From shrinking and expanding myself depending on who was watching. From loving without a life raft. From believing that chaos was a prerequisite for meaning.

I honour her – the version of me who survived through intensity – but I do not need to live there anymore. This year is about integration. About letting all the fragments coexist without demanding they perform. I am not reinventing myself. I am returning.

I am coming into my own in quiet ways. In how I say no. In how I take my time. In how I trust my intuition before external validation. I no longer feel the need to narrate every becoming. Some transformations require privacy to take root.

There is grief here, too. For the versions of me that burnt brightly and briefly. For the years I spent outrunning stillness. For the belief that rest was something I had to earn. Now it is something I crave. I let myself mourn without romanticising the damage. I am learning how to hold joy without bracing for its disappearance. How to want without grasping. How to plan without panicking. How to build without breaking myself in the process.

The new year feels less like a clean slate and more like a continuation written in steadier handwriting. I am no longer interested in dramatic arcs. I want sustainability. I want a life that can be lived repeatedly without resentment.

I will do a lot this year. I will also stop before I am empty. I will chase ideas and let others pass me by. I will rest without apology. I will make space for intimacy that feels mutual, work that feels honest, and silence that doesn’t need to be earned.

If there is a mantra for this season, it is this: I am allowed to change without punishment. I am allowed to evolve without spectacle. I am allowed to want more and demand less of myself in the process.

I enter this year with my hands open — not to grasp, but to receive. To learn. To tend. To protect what is growing slowly inside me. I am no longer interested in surviving my life. I want to inhabit it.

This is not the year I disappear into becoming. This is the year I stay.

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Five words to describe the year, through my eyes:

1. Patience

2. Hardship

3. Love

4. Intrinsic growth

5. Understanding

Where I was a year ago, where am I now.

I feel different now than I did a year ago. Not in a dramatic, life-altering way. But just enough for me to feel it within myself. I know I am only twenty-four, but I can feel something settling in me. I suppose it is that quiet frontal-lobe-coming-into-focus kind of shift which apparently happens when you turn twenty-five. Less urgency, less panic? There may be a slight increase in the space between my thoughts and my feelings. Could I possibly start being kinder to myself? Being more patient with myself?

This time last year, and at the beginning of 2025, I had just graduated with my MA. I felt proud, of course. I felt, for lack of a better word, okay. Those moments, the ceremony, the milestones, the photographs – they were where stability seemed to live for me. I could hold onto them briefly, almost proof that the ground beneath me was solid.

But beneath that, I was carrying a lot of grief. My deda had passed only a month prior, and my baba exactly eight months before him. The loss felt cumulative, like it was stacking itself inside my body with nowhere to go. I was overflowing with it. Grief ate away at my will, my energy, my sense of momentum. I moved through days, but I wasn’t really in them for a good while. That grief hasn’t disappeared; it appears daily, and I would be lying if I said otherwise.

And, possibly because of that, I feel more hopeful than I did this time last year. I am thankful for my change of heart, taking the big step. I think hope felt like it could slip through my fingers, something that could be so easily taken away. Now I am learning to see it as a baseline, as something sturdy. Hope doesn’t demand certainty, just openness. This is something I am still grappling with; I am still learning.

What this year has asked me to learn.

Patience. I know that this is the most important lesson I have learnt this year. Not in a neat, passive way, but the active sort, one that asks for grace. Without it, there is no genuine respect for time, only a constant hunger for immediacy; for things to resolve themselves quickly, for like to bend in our favour.

I find that the pace of the current world makes patience feel almost radical. We are encouraged to stay distracted – from feeling, from boredom, from play, from daydreaming, from the quiet, unremarkable moment where life is truly happening. There is very little solace left for emotions in their full range: the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the haunting, the ones that linger longer than we’d like.

Patience, I find, creates that space. It allows feelings to exist without being rushed towards a solution, an immediate answer. It lets seeds be planted without demanding proof of growth. Some of the most beautiful things arrive slowly, on their own time, shaped by waiting rather than force.

We can’t always have it our way.

But sometimes, what arrives instead is softer, deeper, and far more honest than anything we could have demanded.

Hopefully, these confessionals and reflections haven’t deterred you from continuing to read. Now, I would like to share some aspects of the year that brought me joy

Books

This year I read 40 books in total, these were my highlights:

The Coin - Yasmin Zaher

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

Bluets - Maggie Nelson

Kala - Colin Walsh

Girl, Women, Other - Bernardine Evaristo

Forty, a very nice, round number – I admit I had a lot of free time. However, I did read more slowly this year. Sometimes, I reread and reread because my mind kept wandering back to itself. I stopped seeing this as a failure, rather as a sign of what was asking for attention and a learning opportunity to refocus my mind.

The books I loved most seemed not to offer solutions. They sat with discomfort. I felt trusted to meet them halfway, to bring my own history and feelings into a space they created. The Coin by Yasmin Zaher felt sharp and unsettling in the best way, a book that made me aware of the body, of money, of desire, of power. All the things we’re taught not to speak about too plainly.

I discovered a classic, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I travelled through time, exploring slowly, savouring its atmosphere, its unease, the way it lingers long after the page is turned. It reminded me that obsession, jealousy, and longing don’t belong to any single era; they just find a new language.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson felt like sitting inside someone else’s thoughts, tender and fractured and deeply human. I underlined sentences not to remember them later, but to honour how they landed in my body in the moment. A sort of small recognition.

Kala by Colin Walsh arrived with a different kind of intensity, pulling me through memory, friendship, and the ways we circle back to the places and people that shape us. Grappling with morality, different perspectives all feed into each other.

Finally, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo felt expansive and grounding all at once. The weaving of so many lives, and it never once feels out of place. A reminder that identity is never singular, never static, and constantly unfolding, where stories can hold contradictions without trying to solve them.

These books I did not rush through, but I did devour. These books have made such a strong impression on me. If you have a chance to pick any of them up, please do; they really are, in my eyes, such beautiful pieces of literature.

Podcast - The Blindboy Podcast

There was one voice I returned to again and again this year - every single day. The Blindboy Podcast became a steady presence, someone I listened to daily through my speakers, woven into my routine. Excited every week for a new episode to enjoy. Blindboy makes you feel like you are spoken to, not spoken at.

For Christmas 2024, my beloved bought us tickets to see Blindboy live. Experiencing the podcast in a theatre, surrounded by other people listening intently, it was an intimate experience. That night, Blindboy was joined by Debs Newfold, a Shakespearean storyteller. Listening to her felt like stepping briefly outside of the pace of modern life and into something older, slower, and deeply human. Storytelling as a ritual, as a connection.

It was grounding to witness something I experienced through my speakers, before bed, on a walk. To see how words that travel through the speakers can also fill a room, hold attention, and create stillness. It was such a thoughtful gift, one I am so grateful for.

Albums.

1. Horses - Patti Smith

2. Post Heaven - Jadu Heart

3. The Fashion Focus - Starflyer 59

4. Pink Moon - Nick Drake

5. Ima Neka Tajna Veza - Bijelo Dugme

6. From The Pyre - The Last Dinner Party

7. The Mocking Stars - Lausse The Cat

Music was where feelings became physical this year. I thought I had lost that part of me that felt something deeper with music, the thing I had through my teenage years when everything felt way bigger than it actually was. So, I returned to albums not for novelty, but for familiarity — for the comfort of knowing what was coming next and choosing it anyway.

Horses by Patti Smith felt electric and grounding all at once. Especially since this year was the fiftieth anniversary of its release. I loved its refusal to be neat, the way it lives somewhere between poetry and protest. It reminded me that art doesn’t have to be polished to be powerful. It just has to be honest.

There was something so intoxicating about Post Heaven by Jadu Heart. An album written by a couple going through a breakup but remaining so married to their craft; something so admirable about it. The dreamy, blurred at the edges, slipping easily between light and dark. It became the soundtrack to many moments, especially when I wanted to feel less suspended, not quite here or there.

I returned often to The Fashion Focus by Starflyer 59, letting its hazy guitars wash over me. It felt slow and immersive, perfect for evenings when I needed to disappear into sound without being overwhelmed by it. My favourite song on the album is Fell In Love At 22.

There was Pink Moon by Nick Drake. Gentle, sparse, and endlessly tender. An album that doesn’t demand attention, but rewards it. I listened to it when I needed to be reminded that softness can be a form of strength.

Listening to Ima neka tajna veza by Bijelo Dugme felt like opening a door to memory and heritage. Music that carries language, place, and history within it. My mama’s favourite band, which I am proud to keep listening to. The happy, the sad, all the emotions and more are contained in it.

From The Pyre by The Last Dinner Party arrived with drama and intensity — theatrical, unapologetic, alive. It reminded me that music can be bold and indulgent, that there’s room for excess as well as restraint.

Finally, The Mocking Stars by Lausse The Cat carried a different energy. Listening to this album is like listening to a play, closing your eyes and seeing it all unfold. Conversational, introspective, letting us in on The Cat’s life and his secrets. An album I have been waiting for since 2018, and I am pleased it was worth the wait.

These albums have been my favourites of the year; they shaped it. I let them move through me, and in doing so, I felt excitement, sadness, joy, confusion. In a way, they helped me understand what I was feeling, possibly before I had the words to articulate it.

Films.

• Bugonia

• Before Sunset

• Lost in Translation

This year, I returned to films that felt less like entertainment and more like sitting beside someone else’s thoughts. Stories that didn’t rush to explain themselves, that lingered, that allowed me to linger with them.

Gigs.

• Jadu Heart

• Patti Smith

• Mac Demarco

Gigs were moments where I stopped narrating my life and simply occupied it. Where my body knew what to do before my mind caught up.

Seeing Jadu Heart live felt immersive and dreamlike, the music spilling out into the room and blurring the edges between myself and everyone else there. I had waited a long while to see them. From my small university bedroom, listening to their album Hyper Romance with my speaker on the top of my wardrobe, hoping for an immersive experience, to finally witnessing their love for music on stage. It really was a wonderful experience. It was the kind of gig that made time feel elastic — moments stretching, collapsing, reforming — leaving me slightly disoriented in the best way.

Patti Smith’s celebration tour for 50 years since the release of Horses was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My love for this woman’s writing and skill is something I can’t quite explain. But seeing her live felt reverent. Not polished, not performative — just present. There was something grounding about watching someone who has spent a lifetime making art still stand on stage with such conviction. It felt like witnessing history, but also something intensely alive and current. A reminder that passion doesn’t dull with age; it sharpens.

Finally, seeing Mac DeMarco with a lovely friend of mine was a different experience from the other gigs. It felt lighter, looser, playful. The kind of gig that invites laughter alongside feeling. It reminded me that music doesn’t always have to be serious to be meaningful. Joy, too, can be generous and expansive. A beautiful shared moment between two friends, how thankful am I for that.

I loved the process of getting home after each of them. The ringing ears, the tired feet, the quiet satisfaction of having been fully there. These nights were brief, but they stayed with me — proof that presence, even in passing, can be enough.

A closing reflection, carrying the good from this year forward.

Looking back on 2025, I notice the small ways I and those around me have shifted, the subtle recalibrations that often go unseen. With some people, I felt a growth and positive shift, and with others an inevitable stagnation, or possibly just that our lives are parting in ways as we grow in different directions – due to no one’s fault, really.

Change has arrived consistently and quietly throughout the months of 2025, in moments that could easily have been overlooked: a morning spent reading, a song that follows me home, a walk where the air feels heavy with possibility. These fragments remind me I am present, imperfectly, fully.

Patience became its own form of grace. It is not passive; it is a practice of noticing, of allowing, of letting life unfold in its own timing. It makes space for emotions to breathe, for seeds to root unseen, for beauty to appear unhurried. The year has taught me that not everything bends to desire, and that this surrender can be generous. Most of the time, living through tough moments really shapes you as a person and gives you tools to move through life differently. We can all mope and think ‘poor me’, but what is the point in that? Your energy is being sucked out, when you can just be. Live through life as others have, and do. You are not your failures, nor are you your successes. Rather, those things happen to YOU. And, how fun would it be if those external forms of validation don’t shape your character; instead, we acknowledge, celebrate, feel pride and live in the happiness of the moment.

Companionship, in its many forms, marked the year. Words on pages, voices in headphones, songs that reverberated through my body, films that lingered in quiet rooms — each became a thread weaving the fabric of my days. Books like The Coin, Bluets, and Girl, Woman, Other held me, shaped me, lingered in the spaces between thought and feeling. The Blindboy Podcast, especially experienced live with Debs Newbold, reminded me that listening can be an intimate act, that presence matters even in shared silence.

Albums like Horses and Pink Moon moved through me, translating emotion into something physical. Films such as Before Sunset and Lost in Translation offered reflection without demand, gentle companions for evenings and long walks. Gigs, Jadu Heart, Patti Smith, Mac DeMarco, were reminders that joy can be expansive, bodily, fleeting, yet enduring.

Now, I carry hope differently. It is a quieter, steadier, less fragile thing. It is not expectation, but openness: a willingness to lean toward life even when it is uncertain, to sit with feeling without rushing, to allow beauty to arrive on its own terms. This is what I take from the year — patience, presence, and the knowledge that depth is earned in attention, in care, in allowing rather than forcing.

2025 has taught me to inhabit life fully, to feel without apology, and to hold both grief and joy as vital companions. I step forward carrying their weight lightly, aware of their presence, ready for whatever unfolds next.

Here is to 2026. To bring light, happiness and more hope – I hope to do myself proud in the new year. To keep writing, to grow even more, and to enjoy the life I lead with patience and gratitude.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you stick around in the new year. I am very grateful.

The hands of my Baba Olga made the most beautiful things I have ever tasted. I say this not in the way people speak fondly of childhood or out of some polite nostalgia, but with pure certainty. Her hands were small, birdlike and fragile, but they carried the authority of someone who spoke fluently with gestures rather than most people do with whole languages. This trait I admired and observed, hoping to one day be in her likeness. In those hands lived a kind of kitchen holiness, an ordinary miracle that keeps a family stitched together through winters, losses, and the soft betrayals of time.

When I think of her, I remember the kitchen first. Not the walls, or the tiles, or any of the old broken objects she couldn’t part with in her kitchen, maybe not even the act of cooking itself – but rather the atmosphere, thick with warmth of something slow-cooked, or the beautiful pita, be it sweet or savoury, which she made all the time. It always felt as though the room was breathing by her command. As though every drawer, every spice jar, every bag of Vegeta, every pot simmering on the hob had aligned itself to her rhythm. Perhaps even, the rhythm was so familiar to them that there was no confusion about any of their purposes. She never hurried. Even when the day demanded it, she moved as though time itself bowed a little to her patience.

There was a magic in the way my Baka prepared food. Not theatrical, not the kind that asked for applause. It held a gentler magic. One found in lullabies, candle flames, and whispered promises between her and I. She folded meaning into dough, coaxed sweetness out of fruit that seemed too shy to offer it, and made a simple Pilav taste like a confession whispered across the table.

I remember watching her hands, her thin wrists and soft knuckles with fingers that slightly bent from years of work. She pressed and folded, pressed and folded, a slow devotion, like a prayer in motion. Every time I was around, she would make me watch, and I relished it. I would soak up every second, she would say, “Watch, so one day you can make it for your family.” Her words and pictures etched into my brain. Sometimes I have to dig for them, but they always come up.

It was in those moments that I felt she was teaching me something larger than cooking. Something about love, about care, and tenderness. The sort of feeling that doesn’t ask, nor does it need to be named. The love that makes itself known one Pogača, one warm bowl, one sweetened bite at a time.

In those days, I thought of her food as beautiful because she made it taste beautiful. Because it reminded me of comfort, safety, belonging, home. But, as I grow older, I understand that its beauty always came from something deeper: the way she poured her entire history, the joys, its ruptures, its small triumphs, into everything she made. Her hands remembered things she may have never wanted to speak out loud. The way she and her family lived in the village. The way scarcity shapes flavour, and gratitude shapes appetite. The way women hold entire generations inside their aprons, feeding children with more than the ingredients.

There is a mythology around grandmothers, especially in Balkan families. We speak of them in soft tones, as though their spirits hover near the windowsills. We say they were strong, but that word is never even near enough. Strength implies choice. Surviving implies necessity. Baka survived a world that never once asked her what she wanted, but she made a beauty out of it anyway. She made it out of butter and patience. Out of flour and intuition. Out of the alchemy of a woman who held both a time of hunger and a time of abundance. She created success in every way possible, with her cooking and beyond.

I know that the food she made carried stories that she didn’t want to burden us with. The sweet things tasted of summers she missed. The savoury carried the echoes of winters she endured. She would stand over us, watching as we took bites of her food, pleading for her to sit down and talk with us. Oh, how I wish she had told us it all – but she was a quiet woman, one who showed more than she spoke. Even now, when I try to recreate one of her recipes, it feels like I am piecing together a map of her life: one spice, one fold, one simmer at a time.

And yet, every attempt falls short. Not in taste, but in spirit. Mine is food that remembers her. Hers was food that remembered everything.

The older I get, the more I realise that grief, when it comes, often smells like the kitchen. It arrives quietly, politely, like an unexpected guest who takes the seat she once sat in and waits to be acknowledged. I feel it most in solitary activities, chopping onions or stirring a pot the way she taught me to. It is the silence that comes with it.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that I do avoid cooking, that I don’t think I am strong enough yet to commit to something that reminds me of my Baka, who I love so deeply. The grief comes out of my eyes every time I try, not knowing if I can admit that it is grief or just blame the onions and my sensitive eyes. She had sensitive eyes, too.

I know that letting go isn’t avoiding and turning away from the past. Baba taught me otherwise, without the need for spoken words. Letting go is not forgetting. Letting go is making space for what remains.

And what remains are her hands.

Sometimes, late at night, when the home is silent, I feel her presence in the dim glow of the kitchen light. She never got to know my new home and my new kitchen, but I imagine she knows it well. I feel her warmth, as a memory with its sleeves rolled up. I imagine her standing beside me as I make two cups of tea, her smiling and asking if I have any walnuts or biscuits.

I think of her with every first bite of food I take.

Because the hands of my Baka Olga made the most beautiful things I have ever eaten. Not because they were perfect, but because they fed something beyond hunger. Something spiritual, something tender.

They fed the part of me that always wanted to belong.
They fed the part of me that still believes in simple magic.
They fed the part of me that understands love doesn’t disappear,
it changes its shape, its season, its temperature,
but it stays.

Her hands are what remain in my heart, guiding me through food and through life.

It has been waiting.

Nothing here has tried to age with me. The duvet still white and crinkled, the blu-tac remnants from past feverish devotions of someone who believed loving something was the same as becoming it. Even the string of fairy lights, half burnt out and dimly lit, hangs as it always did, refusing to fall.

It is comforting, in a way that I hadn’t expected.

As though some version of me never moved out at all. I step inside and realise the air smells the same: the fresh laundry scent, old cotton, a sweetness I can’t quite name. Maybe it is the remnants of my teenage perfume, Tommy Girl, absorbed by the cushions. Perhaps it is just a memory, stubborn in its clinging.

For a moment, I am certain that if I speak too loudly, I will disturb something ancient. Not haunted, maybe not even tender. Just a past.

The bed looks smaller than it ever did. I sit, careful, as if afraid the mattress might not recognise me, but it receives my weight with a gentle sigh. The dip where I slept is still there, moulded to a body that fit easily, dreamt more freely. I run my hand across the duvet and feel a strange ache somewhere beneath my ribs. Is this the nostalgia stretching?

Nothing has changed, and yet here I am, changed in ways I once thought weren’t possible.

Looking up, I see my name written in pencil. There was a time, I was maybe ten or twelve, or younger or older, when I thought it was important for me to leave a mark. That I should be remembered even when I am long gone. This meant that I was obsessed with writing my name, a heart, and the date in every hidden nook in the room and in the house. I trace my name with my fingers, remembering how convinced I was that a hundred years from then someone would see it and think… Who was she? But, of course, my name was written in pencil that greyed over time.

Across the room, the mirror is there. For a heartbeat, I think my reflection has arrived without me – it looks familiar but slightly delayed, as though trying to place where it knows me from. I lean in. I can still see the girl I used to be in the soft parts of my face, but she’s buried now beneath years I didn’t plan.

I look away first.

The ceramic bunny is still on my dresser, right where it had always been. It has a chipped ear, its faintly amused expression. As a child, I was convinced it could hear me. Now, holding it again, I am not entirely sure I was wrong. It starts to feel warm against my palm, as if it remembers being spoken to and held.

The wardrobe hasn’t shifted either. I seem to have created a clothing time capsule to return to. My old clothes hang like versions of me I can’t and don’t want to claim. There is a cardigan I wore every day of sixth form, stretched out at the elbows. The dress I thought was special, which I had to save for a specific occasion that never came. I found a time to wear it, though, when I gave up on the idea of ‘special’. I touch the fabric and feel it crumble at the edges, fragile. It smells faintly of summers that felt important at the time.

In the drawer, stacked neatly, are my collection of journals. Hardback, softback (preferred), spiral-bound, cardboard – every shape of growing up.

I’m not sure I remember arranging them so carefully.

I sit cross-legged on the carpet and pull one from the pile, a hardback, a sort of minty green with an elasticated closure. I open it and find sprawling handwriting, neat handwriting and everything in the middle. All done with a sense of urgency, knowing the thoughts had to be emptied from my mind onto the paper with ink. The entries are filled with worries that felt like the end of everything: confusion about who I loved, who didn’t love me back, the violent ache of wanting a life bigger than the one I was living.

As I turn pages slowly.

The handwriting continues to change over time – neater, then messier, then calmer.

I can see my heart maturing.

Breaking.

Healing.

Trying again.

Attempting to make sense of things.

Some pages are smudged, either from tears or careless hands. Others are so full of ink it looks as though I was trying to drown the page. I feel protective of the girl who wrote these words, and grateful to her too. She documented everything so I might remember what it felt like to feel things sharply.

I tuck the journal back into its pile, smoothing the pages before I do.

The desk drawer still sticks, but opens with the same soft complaint. Inside are scraps of paper: lists of books I wanted to read, doodles of flowers, dramatic fragments of poetry that meant something then and still do now, if I squint. There’s an old perfume bottle with only a drop left. I lift it to my wrist, and suddenly I’m seventeen again, trying to make myself beautiful in the eyes of people who never noticed.

Night arrives without ceremony.
The fairy lights blink obediently, soft and warm.
I lie on the bed and feel myself sink into the exact angle my body used to make, as though I never left. The room feels full. Inhabited by every version of me who has ever felt anything.

I remember writing my name in pencil on the walls, whispering into the dark. I thought everything was about to begin. I thought I would know, eventually, how to want the right things. Perhaps I still will.

I imagine the girl I was sitting beside me.
Her hair tangled from sleep, her hands ink-stained from writing.
She watches me with quiet curiosity.
She doesn’t ask what happened. She just studies the way I breathe, as though recognising something familiar beneath the years.

The room holds us both without question.

In the morning, light presses through the blinds in gentle stripes.

The mirror feels less accusing. The rabbit sits exactly where I placed it, patient as ever. The journals rest in their stack, like a tower of tiny pasts.

I smooth the duvet before I stand. The mattress rises behind me, slow and reluctant.
I close the door softly, knowing that if I opened it again, the room would still be waiting, unchanged.

The hallway smells like coffee and now.

I carry the moment with me, quiet, tender.

Grateful that the room stayed the same,
so I didn’t have to.

This phenomenon didn’t emerge out of nowhere. We have slowly been trained into it. For over a decade, it seems social media has pushed people to be understood first as images and second as people. Every moment has become potentially archivable. An opportunity to be documented, smoothed and colour-graded. The photo becomes a cultural ritual: proof of belonging, proof of desirability, proof that a life is worth watching. And in the process, friendships began to take on the logic of visual branding. You start to notice patterns: the group that dresses in muted earth tones, perfectly symmetrical in their beige minimalism; the hyper-feminine cluster in soft pastels, each friend styled like a variation of the same archetype; the clean vibe gathered in with the slick backs; the artsy crowd assembled around thrifted textures and angles that catch the light just so. It is not that they planned it, necessarily. It is more than visual coherence has become a language in itself, a silent expectation that eventually shapes who stands beside you.

There is, of course, a certain innocence to it. People have always gravitated towards those who resemble them, at least on the surface. Homophily, ‘birds of a feather flock together’ – it seems only natural for people to tend to form bonds with people who share familiar signals, even small ones. Clothes can be shorthand for culture, value, even politics. Someone who dresses like you might feel immediately legible, instantly safe. There is nothing inherently sinister about that. Aesthetic alignment can spark connection, offer comfort, and create a sense of little micro-communities in an overwhelming world. It can be playful, expressive, even liberating.

But, unfortunately, that is not the whole picture, and increasingly it feels like the gentlest part of a much sharper reality. The trouble begins when aesthetic harmony becomes an unspoken requirement rather than a happy accident – when appearance is no longer a by-product of compatibility, but the basis of it. Slowly, subtly, people begin choosing friends not because of who they are, but because of how they look together. It is an inversion of relational depth: personality becomes optional, while appearance becomes the organising principle.

This tendency is more deceitful than it first appears. When friends are selected for their aesthetic value, their follower count, or connections, they are reduced to objects that enhance one’s personal brand. The boundaries between friendship and self-curation dissolve. People become set pieces, bodies to fill a frame. And unlike the staged tableaux of influencers, everyday life doesn’t announce its performances; they happen invisibly, instinctively. A friend who doesn’t “fit” the group’s visual identity becomes a disruption, an error in the composition. You can see it in ways so small they appear meaningless: the crop of a photo tightened to exclude someone’s outfit that doesn’t match; the subtle distancing from the friend whose image threatens the cohesion of the group’s social media presence; the exclusion of someone once close due to not fitting their new standard and their new group. Making them suddenly feel out of place with a person who once embraced them without condition.

Behind these tiny choices is a much older hierarchy: the persistent privilege of beauty. Aesthetic-based friendships often replicate the same dynamics that structure desirability in broader culture. It seems as if the pretty, slim, effortlessly photogenic friends become a kind of social capital. They elevate the group’s status, its online reception, and its perceived glamour. Those who don’t meet these standards are quietly sidelined, not through cruelty, but through the kind of polite neglect that is never named or called out. It creates an unspoken ranking system, one that masquerades as taste but is, in truth, simply the age-old preference for beauty, repackaged in contemporary language.

What makes this especially troubling is how it masquerades as organic. It feels natural to want people around you who look like you, dress like you, reflect you back to yourself. However, when the lines between identity and aesthetics blur, when the body becomes the medium through which belonging is negotiated, people who don’t conform are pushed out of the picture, metaphorically and literally. Style becomes a boundary marker, and suddenly you are not quite in the group, nor quite out, suspended in some strange social limbo.

For those who sense they don’t fit their peers' aesthetic vocabulary, the pressure is palpable. They adjust their clothes, their hair, their habits — altering themselves not to express their identity, but to maintain social inclusion. Friendship becomes another stage on which a carefully managed persona must be performed. The costume changes, the lines are rehearsed, and the self is shaped to avoid becoming the odd one out. And while this performance can be subtle, even invisible, it is exhausting. It demands constant vigilance, a monitoring of one’s own appearance as though deviation might invite social penalty.

This raises a deeper question about authenticity. What does it mean to be truly known in a culture that values the image over the interior? ‘Aesthetic’ friendships often feel harmonious because everyone plays the same role within the same visual script. Yet beneath the coordination lies a hollowing out of intimacy. People who match in appearance may not match in values, humour, generosity, or, most importantly, emotional depth. And as the bond is built on visual affinity rather than internal connection, it is fragile. The moment someone’s aesthetic shifts, something changes, or as soon as someone has entered a group with a certain vibe, past friends may be left behind. The friendships become unstable. What once felt like a unity reveals itself as a coincidence of visuals rather than a meeting of souls.

To be fair, the issue is not that aesthetics are shallow or meaningless. Clothes and beauty have always been forms of communication, deeply embedded in identity, which is itself a wonderful form of expression. The mistake lies in letting these surface indicators overshadow everything else when the shallowness arises. When aesthetic compatibility becomes the foundation of friendship, it constrains the spectrum of people we are willing to know. It narrows our world. It prevents friendships that might have challenged us, expanded us, and comforted us in ways we did not expect. Instead, remaining enclosed within a carefully coordinated aesthetic bubble, convinced that we have found our people while missing out on genuine connection.

Underlying all of this is the larger cultural shift towards visuality. We live in a time where meaning is increasingly mediated through images. The self has become a product to be managed, displayed, refined, perfected. Within this paradigm, friendships seem not to be exempt. They, too, become part of the curated self, folded into the narrative of identity we present online. Photos capture only the surface of relationships, but because images are what circulate, they become the perceived truth of the connection. The deeper layers, the late night conversations, or the shared struggles, or the history, become invisible to the audience. And slowly, dangerously, they become less visible to us as well. One can start valuing the friendships that photograph well over those that hold us when life becomes unphotographable.

In this sense, aesthetic friendships are not the root problem; they are a symptom. They reflect a world where image dominates substance, where the visual eclipses the relational, and where people learn to curate their lives rather than inhabit them. This is why the critique must look beyond the individuals who participate in aesthetic selection and toward the cultural structures that encourage it. We are all, in some way, shaped by the pressures of visibility. We have absorbed the logic of likes and algorithms into our private relationships. We have mistaken seamlessness for harmony and aesthetic alignment for closeness.

Yet there is a different way to imagine friendship, one less concerned with surfaces, more open to the messy textures of real connection. It starts with allowing people to be visually dissonant, to stand out, to clash with the palette of your life. It requires resisting the impulse to curate others into a version of yourself and instead letting friendships grow in directions you cannot anticipate. A friend does not need to match you; a friend needs to meet you as you are, beyond aesthetics, beyond performance.

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is choose people who do not fit neatly into the moodboard of our lives. To prioritise who makes us feel safe over who looks good standing next to us. To allow our friendships to be shapeless, unpredictable, unphotogenic. Because the relationships that sustain us are rarely the ones that photograph well. They are the ones that withstand change, that expand rather than restrict us, that welcome contradiction rather than symmetry.

The curated friend groups look beautiful from a distance. They move in harmony, coordinated and composed, as if they belong to a world slightly more perfect than ours. But the friendships that matter are rarely that polished. They are textured, uneven, sometimes chaotic. They grow in the dark spaces where cameras aren’t invited. They require vulnerability, not visual coherence. They are not designed; they are discovered.

And maybe that is the point. In a culture obsessed with aesthetics, genuine friendship is not about creating a picture, but rather it is about finding the people who remain beside you when the picture falls apart. What we lose when we chase aesthetic belonging is subtle, but profound. We lose the possibility of being surprised by one another. We lose the friendships that don’t make sense until suddenly they do. We lose the uncomfortable, transformative encounters that force us to expand the borders of who we are. We lose the chance to be known in ways that have nothing to do with how we appear. Aesthetic cohesion may feel safe, but it is a safety that narrows us, that confines us to the familiar image of ourselves we are afraid to outgrow.

Real connection asks something very different of us. It asks for curiosity rather than curation, openness rather than ornamentation. It asks us to risk awkwardness, to risk not “matching”, to risk being seen without the protective layer of style. It asks us to resist the numbing ease of homogeneity and to choose, instead, the strange and wonderful messiness of human difference. When we step outside the demand for aesthetic continuity, we create the conditions for friendships that surprise us, challenge us, and ground us — friendships with depth, texture, and endurance.

Perhaps the most honest friendships are the ones that complicate the photograph. The friend who shifts the balance, who disrupts the palette, who looks nothing like you, but whose presence makes the world feel larger, kinder, more bearable. These friendships cannot be branded or arranged. They don’t always look harmonious, but they feel it. They create a kind of internal symmetry, a quiet structure that no camera can capture.

In the end, the question is not whether aesthetic friendships are “bad”, but whether they are enough. Enough to sustain us. Enough to hold us. Enough to accompany us through the seasons of our lives that refuse to be styled. Beautiful friendships may look good in a frame, but only true friendships survive the moments we never think to document: the grief, the confusion, the unravelling, the becoming.

So perhaps the real rebellion in a hyper-visual culture is simply this: to choose friends not for how they complete the picture, but for how they soften its edges. To let go of the urge to curate and allow your life to fill with people who may not match but who matter. To build relationships that are not algorithmically pleasing but deeply human.

Because the picture will fade, inevitably, but the people who have true love will always stay.

Not the me I know from inside my own head – slower, familiar, muddled. This one sounded like a girl who was not aware yet of the unforgiving world. It was a body I used to inhabit, speaking without me, a body I no longer fit into. I thought: who taught her to sound like this? And: why does she sound so much like someone I have lost?

The recording is short, a mere forty-two seconds. She spoke about a train she nearly missed, a friend she saw, the way the sunset looked at the steps. The words themselves trivial, but the tone and tenderness, underlined with uncertainty, stirred something in my chest.

I close my eyes. The room is quiet and cold, the winter months seeping through the brick. Every time I play it, I feel closer to her. I am reaching out to her through time, closer than anyone has been in years. Yet, she is still unattainable. I am listening to someone who is both me and not me, and I still ache for her.

There is an intimacy in it. A loneliness too. I want to hold her by the shoulders, tell her that she will survive the nights she fears and the mornings she hates, but I can’t. She is trapped in the past, and I, in the present. I try speaking aloud to compare, but my voice is different, somewhat deeper, somehow clearer. It lands differently in the air. A level of cautiousness to is now; that free giddy spirit muffled by some encountered truths. But she isn’t aware of that yet, not the silence that will follow, the heartbreak, detachment, not the ways she will learn to measure her own grief.

The pause at twelve seconds makes me pause too. She hesitates slightly, and I sense the weight of the things she wishes she had the courage to say. I imagine the small disasters she will stumble through, the quiet heartbreaks of lovers and friends she will carry alone, and I feel the terrible ache of knowing she cannot be helped yet.

Time feels strange when I play the recording over and over. Each repetition bends it slightly. She sighs differently each time. Her optimism seems to fracture in a new place, her joy bending like a candle in the wind. I realise that every moment I revisit her voice is a moment I cannot reclaim in my own life. There is a particular point, twenty-three seconds in, where she giggles and says, “I’ll tell you later”. I want to know if she did, or if she never did. The pause hangs in the air like dust motes in a shaft of sunlight. Was it a promise that never arrived?

I feel a slow grief, like water creeping into bones.

Listening makes me feel younger, more fragile. I remember evenings when the world felt small, and I believed it would bend around me. I remember laughing loudly, I remember an anxiety-filled heart. Also, I remember the hope, and that stings.

I press pause. Silence. I hold my breath. The air in the room feels dense, like it is carrying all the words that were never spoken – left only in purgatory. Sometimes I think that these are pieces of myself scattered through time, unreachable, fragile fragments. This recording is one of them. She is here, in the room, speaking softly, yet she cannot be touched. I can never step fully into her voice. I can never answer her.

I want to cry, but I don’t think I can cry in quite the same way. Instead, I sit quietly, hands folded, listening to the faint echo of her lungs, the hesitation of her consonants, the tremble in her vowels. Each note is a small grief. Each pause is a small goodbye.

Eventually, the sound disappears, but it doesn’t leave me. Her voice lingers in my ribs, in the throat, in the quiet that follows a long day. I hear it when I breathe, hear it in the gaps between words I speak to others, hear it in the shadows of evenings when I am alone.

I carry her with me now. The younger voice I forgot I had, the girl who believed in small, improbable kindness. I do not know if I will ever forgive her for leaving me behind. I do not know if she will forgive me for listening to her too late.

The room is empty; outside, the wind rattles the window, and the sky has darkened without ceremony. I whisper goodnight into the silence. Perhaps she hears me. Perhaps not.

Her voice, delicate and different, but impossibly mine, is a stranger I will never meet. And I love her anyway.

I hope you enjoy the video, made with love.

music by my beloved x

The clock appears to tick normally, and the air in the room remains still. But inside, everything stretches. Seconds become honey, thicker and heavier, spilling and soaking every moment. I feel my heartbeat in the quiet, and it is too loud, too honest. Dragging through my chest like water, uneven, slow. I lean back in the chair, letting it press against my ribs, waiting for it to soften, waiting for it to stop. I check the window, pressing the tip of my nose against it. Outside, life continues, oblivious to my attention. A dog barks. Someone walks by. The stubborn leaves clinging to the branches, wind-blown and untamed.

Everything keeps moving.

Everything is still.

I try to make myself useful. I fold laundry. I wash a plate. I check the fridge for no reason. I do these things to occupy time, to keep it from noticing me too sharply. The weight of waiting is subtle; it becomes a hand pressing down on your shoulders that cannot be shrugged off.

Sometimes, I imagine the thing I am waiting for as something tangible: a knock, a letter, a voice. But, I know it isn’t the thing itself that I desire – it is the moment it would create. My chest uncoiling, the release of tension. The deep breath following the sensation of the calm.

Time becomes a material. It drifts between my hands, sticky and strange. I cannot grasp it, cannot slow it, cannot speed it up. It lingers at the edges of everything touched, following me when I move, invisible but deeply felt. Sometimes it pulses, almost like a heartbeat I cannot sync with. I try to match it, but the attempts feel futile, the rhythm foreign, and my body refuses.

I think of the wait, it curls inside you. Small, hungry, patient. Waiting with you, for you, against you. It doesn’t scream, and it doesn’t demand attention. It coils around your lungs and chest and throat until you forget what it feels like not to carry it. That is what waiting presents itself as: the slow presence of something without a shape.

I attempt to distract myself again. I open a book, and the words blur. I scroll through my phone, yet nothing feels real. I watch the steam, rise in little twisting columns, fragile and purposeless, and I imagine it carrying my breath with it. I take a sip. The liquid is warm, but it doesn’t help uncoil the ache in my chest.

I imagine that one day, whatever I am waiting for will arrive. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe it isn’t meant to arrive at all. Perhaps the waiting itself is the moment I am meant to inhabit. This slow, unwieldy meditation forces me to notice everything that has always been there: the hum of a radiator, the way the light falls across the table, the dust on the windowsill illuminated by the sun.

The longer I wait, the more these small things matter. Every sound, every movement, every pause has meaning. Even the empty spaces I carry. I am not just waiting for someone or something; I am waiting for time to feel different, for myself to feel different.

And still, I cannot move past it.

I sit, fingers interlocked. I stare at the brick wall. The swell of tension in my chest rises, and I let it. Coiling and spiralling. I can’t fight it. I let it sit beside me, like someone I knew that won’t speak, but won’t leave me. I listen to it, as I listen to the hum of my own breathing.

I measure it. I measure myself.

Waiting is not a passive act. It is not nothing. It is full, it is dense, and it is unavoidable.

It is the space we occupy when nothing else moves for us.

You are still here, it says.

I am unsure when it will end. I do not know if it will. I let it stay with me, teaching myself not to let it suffocate me.

The swings don’t move anymore,
but I still look at them - 
like they might remember me.

I think about the way
my hands once smelt like rust,
how flight was just 
two pushes away.

Twenty can feel like
a locked drawer.
Shopping lists,
washing machines whirring
unfamiliar lullabies. 

Sometimes I want 
knees split open to the sky.
to cry over melting ice cream.
to hurt in ways
my deda's hose could fix.

They say this is adulthood,
mirrors everywhere.
But,
I don’t recognise her.

I miss the afternoons,
being chased by shadows,
not the other way around.

And still – 
If I close my eyes hard enough,
when the constellations start forming,
I hear it:
a tetherball orbiting,
a planet tied to string,
waiting for my hands. 

The train back to the sea was uneventful, slow in that way where time loosens. I was digging through my mind whilst watching the landscape unfold from the window. The same stretches of green, and the same tired little towns. But stepping onto that platform with the salt air welcoming my nose, it has a cold bite. It will never lose its allure. I felt the sea that raised me – or at least, was a witness to my growing up. The rumbling thought of knowing I no longer fit, yet how this place coddled so much of who I once was, like the pockets of sand I once forgot to empty.

My cold feet led the way. The harbour was subdued: nets stiff in the breeze, the gulls circling with less aggression now that the tourist scraps were scarce. The water lay flat and grey. On the street, puddles reflected the broken sky. A few boats sat still, tethered with ropes that had outlived three summers at least. Their names were familiar; they hadn’t been repainted into strangers.

Most cafés had stacked chairs indoors, preparing for shorter days. The corner shop, which now sells lavender lemon cake, had a chalkboard outside, streaked with rain. The streets are half-lived; only a few people brave the wind. Years ago, I would sit in the cold and wind in my school uniform, thinking it was nothing. Now, I shiver at the thought and in my many layers. I watch a woman with red mittens sip tea or coffee.

Past the arcades, their signs flickered through the early dusk. The machines hummed without enthusiasm, music muffled behind glass. Deck chairs were nowhere now, stored away. The tiny gallery window was fogged, and a single lamp lit its interior like a quiet thought. I remembered being fifteen, pressing my forehead to that glass, convinced everything inside meant more than what I could say.

The roads felt narrower than memory. It is Autumn’s doing, bringing you closer to edges. A hand-drawn whale on a wall had faded, chalk sinking into the season. A couple sat on the seawall eating chips; the vinegar smell cut through the cold. They shared a single fork, handing it back and forth without ceremony. Their conversation was quiet enough to disappear into wind. That smallness felt right.

This town was always a bit battered around the margins. Now, in October, it carried that honestly. New shops that looked over-styled in summer felt subdued now—less performance, more survival. Window displays held dried flowers, knitted hats, and postcards stacked with care. A candle flickered in one shop, though the door was locked, perhaps forgotten, perhaps intentional.

I took the bus along the cliffs. The heater worked unevenly, breathing warmth then giving up. I sat upstairs. The windows were scratched, and condensation gathered where breath met glass. Outside, cliffs rose, their chalk exposed, pale against the grey water. Waves pressed themselves against the base, uninterested in theatrics. The town behind me shrank into smudges of colour.

The next town was quieter than I expected. Late October had emptied it. Beach huts were shuttered. A few dogs pulled their owners along the shoreline, paws kicking up wet sand. A bar with tall windows flickered with a small crowd. Their laughter sounded like it belonged somewhere warmer. I bought a postcard from a stall that shouldn’t have been open this late in the season. The postcard showed the shoreline in summer, the colours now dishonest. I wrote on the back: I miss you, but I live elsewhere now. I folded it into my pocket.

Down at the harbour arm, only a few figures walked into the wind. The water slapped against concrete in uneven rhythms. Sculptures lined the path, metal forms that looked neither ancient nor modern. They were half-formed ideas, patient but unresolved. People passing didn’t linger; they simply noted, continued. I suppose not everything needs to be explained. The sea’s colour deepened into something almost metallic, less blue – maybe, a blue from memory. It moved with no urgency, not needing to perform in the colder months. I stood there watching, not to feel anything particularly profound, but because my body recognised the stance.

Somewhere inland, trains moved, though the sound hardly reached here. I thought of the city waiting for me: the pace, the noise, the constant suggestions. In my small flat, mornings begin with the radiator knocking, not the water. Yet sometimes, in the half-light, I wake with the phantom belief that I’m here again, listening for gulls.

As the afternoon thinned into evening, the tide crept higher, swallowing rocks with no announcement. Boats lifted in slow assent. The slipway shone under low light. I sat on one of the benches on the steps, ignoring the moisture which clung to its surface.

I traced the places I once moved through. School walks, secret places, shortcuts, the chip shop that once had unpredictable working hours. These memories came now without nostalgia, simply presence. The girl who lived here is still recognisable to me; she just has different questions now. The town didn’t wait for me. It simply continued along its own rhythm. I’m not sure I ever truly belonged to it, but it is enough to appreciate it now.

When darkness settled, lights blinked on along the water. They didn’t shimmer romantically; they wavered in uneven patches, yellowed and practical. The sea caught them briefly, then let them go. A gust pulled at my coat, reminding me of the hour.

I walked to the station. Streetlights hummed. A lone dog barked somewhere behind the row of houses. My shoes carried wet sand that clung stubbornly.

The sea has seen me at every age: childish, heartbroken, hopeful, lost. I will return again. When the air feels right, or when I want to re-read this version of myself. Not to reclaim anything, but to check in.

For now, I travel with the salt settling into my sleeves.

The clock hums. Its hand pulses like veins, thick and deliberate. Time is molten, stretching across the ceiling, dripping down the walls, pooling beneath my pillow. I am not asleep. I am not awake. I am suspended in the tension between a body folded over itself, bones lined with insomnia.

The silence grows teeth. It bites at my ears, drags along my jaw, curls in my stomach. Shadows twist in the corners of the room, elongating, retreating, then leaning closer, listening. Every creak in the floor, every sign on the walls, becomes deliberate - an interrogation. The air vibrates, dense with sound I cannot name, thick enough to taste, metallic, bitter, electric.

The room presses through my window. Not a pale observer but a sentinel. Its light folds over my face, sharp and accusing, slipping between my eyelids like a finger tracing the edges of my thoughts. It is a companion. It is an enemy. It drags memories from sleep’s edge and folds them over me, then tugs them back like a predator playing with its prey.

My body resists. Limbs tangled, eyes wide, heart loud. My skin buzzing with awareness, every nerve insistent. I am too awake. Too aware. The mattress sighs beneath me, the pillow stiffens. The room exhales, waits, leans. I imagine it counting my heartbeats, folding them into its rhythm.

Clocks throb in multiples, not one but several, each heartbeat of the room echoing against the bones of my skull. Minutes bend. Hours curl. Time folds inward like wet paper. My reflection in the dark window is fractured, flickering, not quite mine, whispering things I cannot remember.

Outside, the trees sway without wind. Their branches lean close to the glass, reaching, scraping secrets I cannot understand. Somewhere a dog barks. Somewhere a siren sings. Somewhere, a drunk man responds. Somewhere else, somewhere I cannot locate, the world throbs low and deliberate.

I try to close my eyes. Darkness folds over me, but it is not rest. It is a tide, pulling at the edges of my thought, dragging fragments into its swell. Shapes swim beneath my eyelids. Colours bloom and dissolve. I see impossible stars, twisted, distant, glowing just beyond comprehension. I hear voices tangled in static, whispers from the moon, the walls, the darkened corners of the room.

I am aching, and it is a pressure. A deep, unrelenting ache of being awake when the body insists on surrender. Every nerve hums. Every breath, a negotiation. The air presses closer, thick and wet with insomnia. I taste it. Salted, metallic, bitter.

The moon tilts. It leans closer, watching, breathing. I feel its weight across my chest, on my shoulders, inside my skull. I am part of it. It is part of me. My thoughts twist around it, around the night, around the slow, impossible hush of hours that will not end.

I rise. Or maybe I stay. Movement is meaningless. Stillness is meaningless. The night is full of patience, with persistence, with intent. Every shadow leans in. Every corner remembers. Every breath echoes in walls, ceiling, floor. I lay. I float. I ache. I wait.

Perhaps this is it. The night is alive. It watches. It waits. It presses against the skin of consciousness, insisting, folding, remembering.

And I am here, awake, unable to surrender, held by silence that bites, by clocks that throb, by the teeth of the moon.