it’s the end of my sixth quarter in college, my second year, my halfway mark. i don’t know how to process it all, which has led to a truly unacceptable amount of time spent doomscrolling and watching instagram reels for five seconds before flipping to the next, because i can’t bare to think about something long enough to develop feelings for it. tells you all you need to know about college.

there’s so much love, joy, and pain in this place. the roads i’ve run down, the spaces i’ve entered, the smiles i’ve exchanged with perfect strangers on these streets. but no one’s really a stranger, because this is stanford, and it’s a small enough for us all to feel a drop of self-importance but big enough for us all to think we exist in the bottom half. this morning i was walking to my last section of the week, for a data science class i wish i’d invested in more heavily. under the arches of main quad, and with the morning sun so especially pretty in a way i hadn't thought to notice when my weeks were faster, i thought to myself, ‘there’s just no way i can ever leave.’

it’s hard to explain the magic of somewhere to someone who hasn’t felt the pulse of sandstone beneath their feet. i’m a campus tour guide, where i get paid to blab away at prospective students and show them around our 8180 acre school (i only take them through two and a half miles). i try to be honest about it all – the academic rigor, the opportunities that are everywhere but often hidden in plain sight, the social life that was bigger than the world to me freshman year but has since started to feel more obligatory than exciting, more stifling than stimulating. dark rooms are just rooms without the person that you’re looking for, and crowds are crowds and sweat is sweat when you know the pit in your stomach won’t leave until he does.

next year i’ll be a resident assistant in a freshman dorm and i hope to keep it real, to be the mom ra whose room is always open for tea and tears. i sometimes wonder if i’m sticking around for something that’s not coming, if i go everywhere and grab everything because i’m afraid i’ll never be the same if i let the minutes pass me by. i think about my friends, people i met a year and a half ago, who are now pillars of my breathing, the basis of my vocabulary, the reason for the warmth and the love i attach to everywhere i’ve lived and eaten and walked. who will stay with me when we leave this place? if i hold on too tight, i know that i’ll crush it. and it’s a beautiful thing to watch who comes and goes. to be surrounded by so much talent, so much light and good fortune: i want to soak it all up before the curtains fall and the waves crash over my head.

there’s contradictions everywhere

a comma

a dot

a drop of purple attention

when it’s dark outside and the lights are on

and the room is full but it’s empty

where we are inside

i wait with the kind of dread that get stuck in my incisors

my cheek a portrait of my wrath

chewed up and raw and in love

i don’t write poetry anymore

it doesn’t feel important

this juicy peach of summer getting ruined on the grill

like how the wind cuts the sun

and i feel cold with all these people

in a room absent of one

Thinking of you always.

Wishing you would know,

there ought to be space for us to enjoy the things we aren’t good at.

painting for pleasure and not for price

baking cookies that taste like dirt and laughing at it all because it was the process

not the outcome that made it so sweet.

i can’t play the piano anymore. when i try my fingers fumble about

like they’ve lost their way and can’t get back but i think it would be nice

to start learning again

even if i never get good and it always feels dissonant

to know that i tried and it was fun and free to make noise.

we let ourselves love even when we’re not good at it

when we hurt and press on the wound so it never scabs how it’s supposed to

and i never say hi anymore because i worry about the silence

but it was the loving that was fun even when the outcome was a mess

crumbled sweetness on the floor and a splattered canvas to show for it

but worth it.

definitely worth it.

I think I might love you but it’s one of those things where it’s not worth it if I don’t. When I look around my room I see your limbs draped along the bed frame, pieces of your heart taped on the wall and propped up on the shelf. When I think about my time here I imagine ocean waves crashing with your voice, something stupid that you said to make us laugh. It’s one of those things where if I had to pick the best aspects of my life, they would all trace back to a few ways that I’ve felt, and those would be remnants of moments with you.

But I’m not stupid. I’ve made peace with the fact that I grew up too fast and left behind the innocence of wishing on dandelions before I fully blossomed. Now I’m something of a witch, grumbling on the shoreline, swaying to the wind, standing tall and independent. I don’t expect to be picked, and I’m content with where I am. A tiny part of me is even glad that you keep me around – never the object of affection, but a wise constant in the scene.

If I do love you, I’m scared that that’s the worst thing I could do. There will always be girls who are prettier, flashier, more me than me. I know every type that you like, every glimmer that catches your eye and warrants a cheeky joke in my direction. If I love you, I am signing myself up for a lifetime of battle scars, every new connection for you matching a burn on me.

So I think I’ll fold this intuition up and bury it in a moving box as I pack up my mind. It was just a lapse in judgment. You own too much of me; I will never let you get close enough to see.

I am not good with my emotions

But you know how you make me feel

Glass

Water

The most delicate and resilient things

Shatters ripples clinks rushes

I wish I could read you open

In a hushed voice I think about you

Like medicine in a healthy body

And on the face of it I could’ve loved you but for now

Briefly I let it rest

Feel it on my skin and then you’re gone

Glass and water

What wasn't over

a sojourner needs a thread

to trace back the steps she took

liberty

far from home

a different ocean but the water tastes the same

like melted lakeside sugar

late night drives from coast to coast

taking the long way

leaving for good

knowing the moments we lived for would stay in our bloodstreams

through the atmosphere

across time zones

in a soul that is shared by many

kept in bodies that ran away

it isn’t nature’s way,

letting go of you.

it’s synthetic

like the threads on a skirt i picked up

and thought you might like

the cosmetic elongation of my eyelashes

and the extension of my belief that you may

someday return. getting done up in

a look you’ll never see but you could

in every corner there’s a glimpse of you.

my shadow holds your hand

my ears prick up in movie theaters

at the mention of things you liked

but never told me.

i think i could’ve loved you

if you stuck around,

or maybe i’d have realized you were human

and i’d have had the courage

to get up and find myself.

It’s so easy to lose yourself in a room of people, to transform into someone different and more radiant than how you feel inside. It’s like a veil falls over your dullness, rebranding you as loved and vintage rather than used and worn out. It doesn’t feel good to think- it feels right to keep moving, to run and twirl and sip until reality spins out and replaces itself with peach hues and bad ideas, warm remedies for a broken heart. That night, beautiful lies are told. Storied records are broken. Timeless classics are born.

through fluorescent failure i found you so pretty

like being luminous somehow made you good

the thunder of being young, the crash course of disappearance

in gauzy strip malls it was always you

a pressure point

a bruise i kept pressing as if

more insistence would pinch our time

stretch it to last for longer in my mind

and blur out the bad parts for my peace

say anything and squeeze it

bunches of bitterness boxed up with flowers

you did a good job with goodbyes.

Not being in high school anymore is a really weird feeling. I cry so much these days, and when I’m not crying, I feel like crying.

Senior year recap: I was named valedictorian and I’m going to Stanford. I placed second in the league in my last race ever, and decided to quit track after the winter season. I had senior days, senior concerts, senior banquets, the whole shebang. I had people sign my yearbook; so many wrote that I’m going to do great things in life, and to have a good one if our paths don’t cross again. It was all a very sweet, slightly bitter, last ride around the academic calendar.

Senior year recap: I had a crippling crush on a boy who doesn’t like me back and is moving away right after graduation so I’ll probably never see him again. I drank way too much coffee and didn’t sleep enough and lost a lot of work ethic and didn’t eat right. I cried. A lot.

I also am in the process of revamping my wardrobe. I dyed my hair. I watched a ton of movies and made friends through movie reviews. I worked long hours at Rite Aid. I went out more. I did things I shouldn’t have on Senior Skip Day. It hasn’t really sunk in that it’s over. I feel like I’m going back to school next week. But I’m not.

I’m trying to live in the now, but it all feels fleeting when the future is looming so darkly up ahead. I hope that in college I’m more confident, more willing to pursue creative ideas. I hope I grow and shed my stuck mindset and I hope I completely forget about things like stupid high school crushes and prom dates. That’s not to say I want to forget how they made me feel though. Pain is necessary for evolution. Loss is necessary for gains.