23 Emotions: Anecdoche

seven minutes approaches,

but for now,

cacophony.

we did this,

oh yeah, me too

except.

that sounds like,

last summer,

magical.

he was there,

i wasn't,

occasionally.

and then layers and words all mashed up and sandwiched together a jumble like unsolved puzzles just tipped out of the box hands grabbing at the pieces like tongues tasting the words.

(minute seven)

silence.

anecdoche

n. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say.

23 Emotions: Exulansis

The edges start off blurred,
an inauspicious beginning,
but those who were there, marked the moment.

Words cannot hold the truth,
though the experience did,
at least for some (I  believe).

The flatness of language to convey,
sharp contrast to the roundness of reality,
that curvaceous form of being.

Pale powder between my fingertips.
all around a vibrant monochrome,
enveloping us into unity.

But these words mean nothing,
to (aside from that band of few) 

you, who were not there.

exulansis

n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

23 Emotions: Onism

a whirring tick,
like an overheated heart. 

this, a fluttering, falling noise,
and sensation.

next destination...
(too many choices).

a leap that twists,
catlike, in midair. 

a heart divided too,
arms reaching in all direction.

i stand here, the hauptbahnhof of my life,
and wonder...which train?

once decided,
the whirring/fluttering will fade.

wind in my hair and face,
no fear of fomo.

just the desire for more time,
real gold is the beauty in a moment.

onism

n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.

23 Emotions: Énouement

This sorrow you hold now, close, 

it no longer has sharp edges or angles.

Raw has been rubbed down to a blurred sepia,

the wash of florescence, turned to warm glow.

A jagged spike, one of only a few,
in that otherwise arabesque line, of life.

Radiating out from the center contact,
each line, life, moving in kind, ever outward...

...but that one, almost parallel,
the line dancing, a twining counterpoint.

Such sweet melodies...

...and I am here to tell you (your sometime self)

hold on

hold on

you will get there, 
and with such magic.

Énouement

n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front.

23 Emotions: Vellichor

Dust motes swirl around me
in a novel they would catch the golden sunlight, 
but this is not that.

Outside it's raining
drops spatter against the grimy window,
but the squashy chair is cozy.

Settled back against the cushions,
the light may not be golden,
but the feeling is.

Inhale...
a thousand stories are held in that scent,
(not just the printed words) but that of how they got here.

One blink of my imagination,
and I'm back on the other side of the glass.
(time has moved me forward) but the books are still there...

waiting,
waiting for a (glorious) dreary day,
of tea and reading.

vellichor

n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

23 Emotions: Rubatosis

Home.

Shell.

Head tucked in,

burrowed.

The whisper of a heartbeat.

"Happy Anniversary"

it taps out in four-four time.

The cool night reverberates around me.

Home.

The dark canvas stretches above me.

(tap-tap)

The syncopation isn't here.

It was, once.

Round, and around

and back again.

Here.

Home.

(is it?)

rubatosis

n. the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

23 Emotions: Liberosis

...when it's gone past midnight,

the other side of twelve,

unlucky thirteen looms large.

A glance backward,

the rear view, an unbroken path.

A single tire mark into the vanishing point.

Was something lost, in that moment past the tipping hour?

(...more than a decade means you rend things wrong)

Niceties are impregnated with imaginative intent.

Step off from imagination,

the world is not in there...

but in the chosen subjective reality between.

Let go of nothing.

Let go...

)nothingness can't be held(

Time folds in on itself,

across the chasm,

You are there.

Dawn comes,

morning shatters the horizon with light,

illuminating that unbroken line.

liberosis

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.