June 16th was the most flawless night. I remember looking at the moon from my second-floor balcony. When I stepped out, I placed my bare feet carefully on the white planks, so as not to touch the bird shit stains. It had rained the previous day. The contours of the fluttering leaves seemed impossibly clear against the purple evening. As vivid as the cry of a plucked guitar string. I leaned over the railing, impossibly tempted to reach out and trace the shapes in the sky with a lazy fingertip.
Ten days disappear in the blink of an eye, and then twenty. It’s been tough to write. Is that due to a scarcity of emotions, or their abundance? Some days I do not distinguish a difference between the two. I don’t think of myself as depressed, or even sad. Instead, I see things more clearly, and that has altered everything.
To be young and afraid. To then go from afraid to amazed, and then to afraid again. To be in free-fall. To be more in love with the mystery of fate than with real life.
Next year it’ll be 2020. Easily the most flawless calendar year in my lifespan. The way it rolls off the tongue: twentytwenty. The year of the disaster movie. I’m worried about me and the kids of my generation. Sometimes we behave like victims of a cult, too wounded to ever truly quit and return to something normal (if that can be said to exist.) Have you been online and seen what we do to each other? This isn’t a think piece. I’m not going anywhere with this opinion. I’m just presenting the question for your consideration: Have you seen what we do to each other?
From afraid to amazed to afraid again. A third act that never quite ends, but instead ripples out indefinitely.
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