Awkward First Date

awkward first date

why does this always happen?

long silences filled with quick eye contact and giggles for no reason

like an awkward first date

no one would guess that we’ve known each other for years

little touches

leaning in

hugs that last too long

everything makes sense

Oh. The stars. I had forgotten about the stars. They had been replaced by city lights.

Oh. Her hand. Her hand is alive. I guess it always has been.

That’s right. I was alone. She was alone. It makes sense to be together.

Huh.

bruised stars

Her hands—always freezing—they are alive. Her dead eyes are blinded by city lights. She counts blessings until she adds up five And now she struggles with putting up fights.

She doesn’t have a personality. She owns every one of them, all at once, Mind dancing with originality. She aches to be gone but she’s been here months.

Her laughs and smiles are a bit too forced. No one seems to notice her behavior. Her humor has become too stiff and coarse. She has long stopped waiting for her savior.

Her sky is filled with jet black and bruised stars So she seeks refuge in distant sandbars.

life away

Life changes. Mostly in small amounts that you never really notice. Sometimes bigger things, but things that don’t affect your life personally. Mostly it just seems too far away to matter. Like hearing about an earthquake halfway around the world. Yeah, it’s sad, but you’ll forget about it eventually. You’re allowed to do that. It didn’t happen to you.

And then life changes in a big way. a really big way.

This isn’t the way it works. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.

It seems distant until it happens to you. Then it’s up close and personal.

And you don’t understand why everyone else treats it as a distant problem.

This is huge. Why don’t you care?

The world spins at 1,040 miles per hour but nobody feels a thing.

Distant news.

slow motion

Who really has time for that? Go in slow motion. I wonder what it would be like to live life that way.

Does it really matter? Slower, slower, Even slower Take it slow, slow.

Does anything really change? Will it?

Don’t think about it. Just go slow.

Stop.

secondhand

She herself had nothing in particular about her that would make her subject to verbal or physical abuse. She herself was born with nothing in particular about her that would make someone dislike themselves. She watched the life around her like a movie, never feeling truly involved, but that fact not bothering her in the slightest. The only thing that kept her connected to this world was her wild and bucking emotion. Sometimes her best friend would go to her for advice, but not because she knew anything about what was happening to them. They would go to her because they knew that she knew about feelings. They were bad at feelings. So she felt for the both of them. She would tell them whatever she felt about what they were feeling. She never knew if she was helping. She liked to think so. And she felt very deeply about them and these problems that were so important to them. She found that it was important to her as well. She found that helping them out with their baggage helped her sort out her own life, even if she never went to anyone else with questions. And along the line, she started to wonder if she was so comfortable with giving all of this advice because she was similar feelings. But that didn’t make sense, she would know. She knows about feelings. But that one thought made her think, maybe she really didn’t know that much at all.