We met in second grade. I was new to the school. You were kind and sat with me at lunch when you saw me all alone, crying quietly as I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Hi. I'm Frank. You're Jenny, right?"

I nodded, while surreptitiously wiping my eyes on a napkin.

"I sit behind you in class," you said, sitting in the space beside me. "What'cha eating?" you asked, pulling your own sandwich from a brown paper bag.

"Peanut butter and jelly."

"Lucky! That's my favorite. I have liverwurst."

"Liverwurst?" I had never heard of it.

"Yeah. Want to try it?" you asked, holding out a square of sandwich. "I'll trade you for one of your triangles."

I wrinkled my nose (the liverwurst did not smell appetizing), but I pushed my sandwich over so you could grab a quarter of it.

"Thanks," you said, mouth already full of peanut butter and jelly.

The liverwurst wasn’t horrible.

For the next six years, you were my sun. Or perhaps I was yours. We became inseparable. If partners were called for in class, you were mine. We ate lunch together every day. We played handball and tag in the school yard; sometimes I was invited to play jump rope with the girls. No one seemed to notice when I invariably landed on F when we played Strawberry Shortcake – although never the first time through the alphabet, of course. Strawberry shortcake cream on top, tell me the name of your sweetheart, Is it A...B...C...D....E....F....

In eighth grade, we would walk around the school yard during lunch, talking about everything and nothing. You loved Saturday Night Live; I could never stay up late enough to watch it. You would practice your jokes on me. I laughed at them all. I talked about getting into my dream ballet school and someday pirouetting with Mikhail Baryshnikov. You dreamed with me.

After school you might walk me home now and again – we were both latch-key kids so no guests were allowed in my home or yours…and being obedient (or just scared of our mothers and neighbors who kept an eye out), we just sat on the porch doing homework on days you didn't have piano or guitar lessons or choir practice and I didn’t have ballet class.

High school came and all our friends and family thought, well, that’s that since we chose different schools. I went to an all girl school and you went to an all boys school.

But, almost every evening we talked on the phone. I'd pull the long cord into the pantry and close the door. We'd talk about our preferred classes – French for me, Chemistry for you, and favorite teachers – Sister Bea for me, Father Bob for you. I worried about ballet performances, you'd kvetch about a joke or a song you were working on.

For your 16th birthday, your friends from our church folk group had a surprise party for you. It was the first time we danced together. It was the first time you looked at me as not just your best friend. We danced our first slow dance to Heatwave’s Always and Forever. I lay my head on your chest. I could hear your heart pounding.

Or perhaps it was mine.

We had our first kiss.

We fell in love.

Junior year I did a play at your school. I got the lead. You came to every performance.

Senior year you started to do stand-up in the city as soon as you turned eighteen. I got a fake ID so I could cheer you on.

We went to different colleges but only miles apart. Our dreams changed. You became a pharmacist; I became a teacher.

We got married a year after we graduated, bought a house, a car, and had two children. We were happy. We were married 67 years before you passed in your sleep.

It would have been a beautiful life, if only…

When I think of my two roads, diverged in the woods, I can't remember the condition of the road I took. Nor can I remember the condition of the one not chosen. Although I can remember different roads I've taken I can not for the life of me remember the scenery. And now I'm older, and have lost almost everything I ever loved in my life and now I realize that even though the directions I've taken have dictated where I sit today, the most important part of my journey was the scenery, in that forgotten scenery they still live. There's still time. There's still hope. Those turns I've made. The hope and time I've lost on the road here. Although I remember many turns, I can't remember the beautiful things I lost along the way. The scenery of the past. When the greatest things I've known were in the background. I wish I too was in the background with them now.

Especially if words are so dewy as to have no lineage in a person's mind.

Maybe I suffer lachesism (unspoken wish for disaster) but what of it...?

one more, uncurable, clinical condition for medical interns to clipboard.

I have, all that I can be sure, of which to speak, if I could, is inarticulate.

...John Koenig will have to hit the road, peddling his newfangled words,

convince us, that the high wind has got our backs bending to a foreword;

a whole book I haven't written because the term has yet to be invented...

Seems though in looking so high to the Greek, he's forgotten you and me.

Language is living entity, of which I bear editorial proof, 90% era absolute.

Give me a word, tied to emotions we all know, cordoned in pauperized bloodline:

*Disastenvy, I don't feel it but I sense a colloquialism worthy of pity... not so lachesism.

*Lifeorexia, let's even tack on Global, connotes shared angst ...more than sonder, sorry.

*Compartmenatlives I truly sympathize with... while ozurie just sounds... too, Jewish...

Apologies to our hidden ancestrage.

So...

I do not know Anemoia, and do regret though perhaps we nodded in passing...

...but I know we've met... Nostalgiavoidia at some point, unreckoned.

08.18.2023

Anemoia challenge @Melpomene

Reference quotes in quick search online:

*Anemoia: "Coined by John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words. Constructed from Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos, “wind”) + νόος (nóos, “mind”), with reference to anemosis, the warping of a tree by high wind "until it seems to bend backward."

"Some of his words are sonder, the realization that everyone has a complex life; lachesism, the desire for a disaster; and ozurie, feeling torn between two lives."

Some seaside

A windy expanse

We make a beeline

For that sun-drenched romance

And somehow

That's enough.

I remember many things. I remember the first wild animal that got inside the house. I remember my brother spoiling the truth of Christmas magic over a game of Stunt Racer 4x4. Hell, I even remember the first time I lost a tooth.

But how do I miss if my family had stayed whole? How do I remember things that have never happened, like my parents salt-and-peppered among the crowd of my eldest brothers wedding? Or choosing baby clothes for their newest grandchild among the fleet (my father chooses a deep blue fleece that says something overtly masculine, whilst my mother chooses a gorgeous onesie.)

I think perhaps it's the culmination of memories. It's easy to imagine a world where my father raised us. Where he stayed. Where both my siblings liked each other enough to even say hello to the other at thanksgiving. In my culture, we have a world-- saudade. It means a longing for something you've never had.

God, do I feel saudade for a continuation to the story of my family.

What would I give to hear my fathers snores, and my brothers bickering over a multiplayer, and the love that once filled these halls...

At about 12AM the nostalgia sets in. I start to think differently. It’s a transformation. I’m not quite sure how the science plays into it, but I do know that I transform. I transform from a logical human being to some kind of wild dreamer. I start to think about all my hopes and dreams and long for them more than anything. I start to imagine what my life will look like in 10 years, and sometimes in only 2 months. I think about what it will be like when I actually do live through my dreams. I make up these dreams in such vivid detail that it feels like I have lived through them. I feel a nostalgia for what is to come. I love what hasn’t happened. I know it’s probably not good. I should live in the moment. I shouldn’t think too far ahead. But isn’t it the hope for what is to come that keeps us going? I think that it is. I think that without a nostalgia for what we have never known, no one would ever get anywhere. No one would ever achieve things if they never dreamed. So here I go again, remembering the future.

The way our minds can play reels in our heads of memories that never happened.

Cover up the dust and cobwebs with...

Rainbow sprinkles and cotton candy.

Mine tries to.

I can't blame it.

I haven't had the worst life,

Nor the best.

Everyone's kind of struggling and everyone's got their goods and bads.

I guess it is weird, though.

Letting my imagination rule over me too long.

I like to draw up visions of prettier things, once in a while.

A sort of rose-coloured glass over a crimson memory.

I once dreamt of a girl...

I call her The Girl in the Yellow Dress.

I hardly think of her now but that day...

We were running in a field.

Her hand in mine.

Till this day, I have a bit of a thing for gingers and it's all her fault.

But I woke up.

And the dance was done.

And she disappeared from my very fingertips with a smile on her face.

I don't even remember what she looked like.

So tell me why...

I searched for her.

Hoped for her.

Begged for another dream, another moment with this woman that felt intimately

Like my own.

Tell me why it felt too real to be purely subconscious-concocted fantasy

And why I hold out hope for a feeling like what she gave me then when I'm so...

Trapped.

Trapped in my thinking.

Or rather, the thinking that was taught to me.

You can't be with a woman.

You can't disappoint your parents in that way.

Truth is... I still hope I find her.

Even though I know the chances are slim.

Because the feelings in that moment were real.

And I woke up with a slight hollowness from a loss I couldn't explain.

It's not like I need her.

It's not like I can't spend a lifetime never meeting The Girl in the Yellow Dress.

But because of her and...

So many other women, I can't help but dream.

That maybe I could find

Someone that isn't...

What I'm "supposed to" find.

Maybe I can love her.

Or them.

Perhaps even him, I dunno...

I'm not sure of many things about myself.

But I do know I am deeply sapphic.

It's a special kind of ache to know that if I ever did find a person to love and be loved by in that way,

The people in my life wouldn't take it lightly.

So maybe I'll shut my eyes again.

And reminisce the day I told them who I was.

And imagine it didn't go badly.

Imagine they reacted like Lito's mother from Sense8

Or Nick's from Heartstopper.

Imagine I live somewhere a little kinder to love of all shades and hues.

Imagine a me that was never burdened by so many expectations.

And perhaps

After all that dreaming,

I'll step away from being a Sleeping Beauty for a while

And learn how to make all those visions of prettier things a reality.

Or try to, anyway.

Ifunanya m, I'm coming.

I promise I'll try to.

I spent my entire life being taught the importance of shame and fear

In everything I've ever done

But I swear...

I will learn to let myself go.

And search for you in the noise.

If I don't?

If you never even existed,

Whether in a past lifetime or this one?

I think you would be proud regardless, obi m

To know that your lover did their very best to love themself the way they know you would have.

So don't worry about me.

Forget all about it.

You're probably safer in a world of fantasy

Than out here among the other lost dreamers pining for more and more magic still

On a floating ball along the cosmos.

I'll always have that bittersweet feeling to remember you by.

And you can keep that small piece of me

As yours

Forever.

November 2012 and the glacier's face, its very terminus, dipped into the water from the moraine on the western side all the way to a rock cliff on the east, not far from the water fall. The ice caves were an afternoon hike across the peninsula and a short walk back across the lake in perfect, frozen conditions. From the trail on the east side, the glacier was visible from every view point as well as from the sand bar by the falls below.

I stood at the east side trail vistas in the summers before thinking that one day I won't be able to see it anymore. That day has come even faster than I imagined, quicker than scientists initially predicted. The east glacier trail is really just a lakeside trail now. I have no idea where - or if - any ice caves still exist. If they do, it would be a much longer, treacherous hike up new, exposed rock cliffs on the west side. The terminus is just barely in the water, a fraction of what it used to be, and they say we'll no longer be able to see it by 2050. The cliff face now extends all the way to the eastern extent. And worse, you can no longer see the glacier from the falls. That thought hadn't even crossed my mind until it happened.

I wish I'd known the glacier when it filled valley, before there was a lake, before the view from the falls vanished only to be replaced by icebergs floating in the lake that are really just remnants for a final viewing before the funeral and cremation.

"Yay! I finally have a boyfriend! You should see how dreamy he is. I just adore him!"

"My girlfriend is the hottest gal around! You should see her in her prettiest dress. Oh, I love her so much."

"Oh, this weekend, I'm going out with my sweetheart. We're going on a date to the local cafe. Just so we can confirm our admiration for each other."

Love. That was all everyone discussed these days. How they met their special one, how they found peace with their lover - everything and anything in between concerning the subject. Hattie hated all this talk about affection when, in reality, she never had a boyfriend or girlfriend herself.

But yet she understood all the surrounding admiration. Not only because it happened to be February and one week away from Valentine's Day, but also since she almost had a girlfriend herself - long before she declared herself to be aromantic and asexual.

Back in second grade, there were a group of boys who always played various team sports with each other - the biggest example being tetherball, a game where two competitors hit a ball attached to a long rope - which, in turn, is connected to a long pole being supported by a tire - and try to tie the ball around the pole either counterclockwise or clockwise, depending on the side each player was on. The winner was always declared the king. It was sort of like four square in that regard, but the gameplay was vastly different than that of tetherball.

Hattie can vividly remember being interested in playing the sport instead of collecting an endless amount of Shopkins like the other girls in her grade. She had walked up to them and was easily able to join one of the games. At first, the guys - and a girl named Pamela that was among the group - went easy on her, but as time went on, she improved, beating player after player with a powerful punch on the ball and a major height advantage.

However, she was unable to beat Pamela. She was in fourth grade at the time and was about a few inches taller than Hattie - furthermore, she had every perk she had and more.

One faithful day, towards the last day of school, Hattie challenged Pamela to a final game, starting off with her signature slap, which sent the ball flying in her favor. Pamela struck back with just as much power, but Hattie didn't give up that easily. The match grew more intense and even the most female-averse boys in the gathering crowd were whooping and hollering so loud that teachers were sent to examine the situation at hand during recess.

As the round went on, Hattie couldn't help but notice how bright Pamela's long, brown hair shimmered in the sunlight and how her eyes seemed to sparkle whenever the tetherball came soaring at her again. She had never had a real crush before, so she was surprised to find herself thinking differently of her than the other students in her class.

Even though Hattie was very much distracted and about to lose her last match, she was saved by the loud shriek of her teacher's whistle, calling the kids in for class once again.

Pamela had politely waved at Hattie for a good time, not saying a word, but the simple gesture alone made her heart flutter like a butterfly flapping its wings towards nectar in the flowers.

Now that she was in senior year and had long since gotten over Pamela, Hattie recalls her lasting thoughts about this beautiful angel that lasted through elementary school. A sudden feeling of unnatural nostalgia came over her as she envisioned the Pamela-centric thoughts she was enveloped in back then. Pamela and Hattie in each other's arms watching the sun disappear in the hills and the sky aglow with blindingly, white stars. Pamela pulling Hattie in for a long, passionate hug and kiss on her bad days and telling her that everything will be okay. Pamela and Hattie traveling the world together and seeing the Eiffel Tower that Hattie had always wanted to see in person.

Hattie giggled at the now-embarrassing images that were circling her head for three years. Nevertheless, she still wonders how Pamela is doing and hopes she is well, but also questions her nostalgia for her love for this woman when it hasn't even officially happened.