jules

it's night and I'm driving watching the blurry asphalt and broken yellow lines pass under my wheels
and it's like the road is moving along without me.

she's sleeping in the backseat wearing panda pjs and a fuzzy scarf and a striped toboggan and crazy socks and pink converse and she's seven now and I have no idea where the time went.

and I wonder how it's possible that I got to have a day like today coming straight from class and work to spend time with her and go shopping and try on crazy hats and eat ice cream and watch minions.

the radio is playing country music turned down low and I'm driving so slow to avoid braking hard or turning fast or hitting potholes. I want her to sleep while she can.

maybe if she sleeps time will slow down. or maybe it'll be like with me when I blink and the next year is here and gone and she's taller and smiling with two new front teeth.

it's taking me too long to write this. I don't know how to get the knot in my throat out on paper or how to show you the quiet and the starlight and how it felt like we were the only two people in the world tonight.

I think sometimes I avoid thinking about things, because I know once I start thinking I'll start feeling and the deeper I think the more I feel and I don't like that. But then comes the quiet and I can't help either.

"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say." - flannery o'connor. I missed it. I miss it.

also, I'm realizing more everyday how much I love my family. it's funny how it takes you till you get older and have to leave to realize just how good things are around here.

recently in memory

[ the semester so far broken down into memories ]

it feels like august never happened. it feels like this year never happened.

feeling like I started two years behind in spanish.

a storm in the collision of a conglomeration of syllabi.

drives and drives and drives with the windows always down. filling up on gas, watching lives flash by on the highway in the heat. 

lots of sitting in my chair doing school. lots of late nights. lots of pens, pencils, scantrons.

s'mores and johnny cash and don williams.

last minute run at dusk after being stuck inside working all day after work, headphones in and the beat of my heart pumping in time with the music s t a y  a l i v e .

realizing that those people you were subconsciously judging are just that- people. that everyone has a story and redeeming qualities and something in common and that you're all just human.

nights slouched in a row of chairs talking about things that are mundane but take on new meaning when people actually care and listen and look you in the eyes. 

cafeteria hangs with people who make you laugh too loud in between class and work.

having swivel-y chairs in lab :')

hammering biological processes into your mind along to the tune of your laughter.

leaning on the car door in the gravel parking lot downtown and unnecessary smiles and an absence of words and the smell of smoke.

losing your flipflops in the deluge of rain in the street, and running back to get them and back into class barefoot and drenched on a monday.

doughnuts at work on a saturday.

cutting my hair and feeling good and not caring what other people think.

figuring out you've been paying for spotify premium and not using it. swapping music.

my nation crumbling and me watching from the sideline not having any idea what to do.

buying lemonade and cookies from a stand some kids set up for charity in your swimsuits and being so happy cause I remember being those kids and saying when I was older I would stop for kids like me.

late nights illuminated by electronic glow, again. afternoon after afternoon at the library.

a space in your heart where the people who really get you aren't.

staying up till 2am talking about Jesus and the Bible and stories that are so real and history and life and everything under the sun.

rushing to wendy's for frostys in the rain and dying because one of us tripped over their words.

there's still a lingering, resistant melancholy sometimes

but when people ask how I am I can say I'm good and really, really mean it.

and it feels good. and even though sometimes it doesn't, it is.

(got it?)

12am 10/1/16