2019 selections from my iphone 7 notepad

I wept. (12.26.19)

i am pretty (8.5.19)

sorry I was late, I had to mentally prepare (7.24.19)

his fingers traced his name on my back and I smiled (5.19)

You broke my heart when I didn’t even know you (11.24.19)

Before I fall for you, let me lower my expectations. (8.26.19)

I feel like an imposter where I’m supposed to belong. (11.27.19)

snow freckled the mountainside in the light of the rising sun (5.19)

Nostalgia seeps through my feet as they crush the autumn leaves. (10.4.19)

I want to create writings that make you wonder and words that make you weep. (8.9.19)

Quiet tears gently slid down my cheeks because it just seemed like a song you should cry to. (8.4.19)

Their house was filled with artwork that would fit anywhere and that always made you feel like you were intruding. (8.17.19)

When her life was stripped of her busy, packed schedules, then she could really think and write like she was meant to. (12.20.19)

I burned the photos and unfollowed the accounts and scrolled past the texts but when do I delete the poetry you inspired me to write? (8.23.19)

I am entirely convinced that we never see someone on accident. We took this path, decided this time, hesitated just a minute, so that we could see who we needed to see. That’s God. (8.24.19)

How can art change your life? How can a melancholy movie move you to be new? I weep for people I could never possibly know, yet their story stays with me. My heart yearns for their struggles. I want to teach, to write, to befriend, to change someone, just as this movie has done for me. White letters scroll past the black emptiness as I find new truths hiding in the crevices in my brain. How can a precise combination of fictional talent make an impact on such a simple girl like me? (8.25.19)

She looked at her watch. Precisely on time. Twenty minutes late, just as she planned. She, of course,
could have been twenty minutes early. She was perfectly capable. Just look at her records when attending doctor appointments and clocking in at work. But being late was a purposeful sort of thing. Even then, when she was late, she would sit in her car to finish the song she was listening to, slowly inch her way in, and find the nearest bathroom, just to prolong the time until she had to socialize with people who wouldn’t remember her face by the end of the night anyway. Yet she craved it, that social interaction. Sitting at home didn’t feel right, it wasn’t right! But once she was there, that’s all she wanted to do. (11.25.19)

What is the word to describe the way the beach feels as you sink into the sand and sleep to the patterns of the waves? And time pauses because for once you don’t worry about your problems, instead you sleep in the afternoon sun as it tickles and kisses your skin. The sun melts in the water, then the stars speckle the night sky, and the blackness envelopes you in a peaceful sort of way. You don’t feel lost, instead you are found, simply because your feet feel the stroke of the waves as they reach for you on the sandy shore. (10.19.19)

When you lie awake, are you thinking of me? Of our awkward encounters or long conversations? Or the way you grazed my arm or touched my knee? When you lie awake, do your thoughts tumble in my direction? Do they cartwheel among the butterflies that swarm my space that I spend with you? Do you think of how you hold me and how I gently lean into your embrace? At first I am hesitant, but then it happens all at once. Like my thoughts that sprinkle your name but then impound the memories focused on you. But when you lie awake, does your mind explore our possibilities? Or do you simply drift away quickly into subconsciousness where I hope you’re dreaming of me? (5.20.19)

I’m not swimming. I’m doggy paddling through the ocean. And the waves come slowly, gently, I can see them on the horizon but then all of a sudden they’re on top of me and I see the foam and it’s swirling around me and I’m supposed to be drowning but I’m not because I still want to try but it feels good to sink, sink, sink..
And my head bobs up through no effort of my own and I’m on top again and I’m breathing, gasping, searching for air and I feel it in my lungs and it fills my chest and I’m alive. I feel alive.
And the next wave comes and I think I can do it and the water laps against my chest and I’m under for just a moment because this time I don’t enjoy it but I still miss the sinking?
And it’s just an endless cycle of wanting to breathe clean air and wanting to sit on the ocean floor with the weight of the water pushing me down.
And I feel lost. I can’t even swim. All I can do is doggy paddle through the sea.
I want to be a swimmer, but how can I be when I don’t even know where I’m going? The waves push me around and I guess that’s enough. (8.25.19)