November is for Nostalgia

[Note: this one time I wrote a thing, and promptly got distracted without posting it. So, Throwback Thursday: unseen post edition. Cheers, lovelies!]

I am trying to feel how I feel without breaking. Breaking down, breaking open, breaking through. November is for nostalgia; memories coiling tightly around themselves like a writhing knot of snakes at the center of a tree. Lately I have been lonely for people I don’t know. Lately I have been lonely for the people they can’t be anymore. The cells in our bodies replace themselves every seven years, and someday I will be a person you have never seen. I’m learning to be ok with that.

It's fall now and I am in love with a girl who fits like well-worn flannel. When I feel lonely I remember night time, and my body against her body against dirt. Bark cracking like sinew and tendon, the fire’s noisy meal a product of hasty scavenging. Hard-won flames gnaw noisily. Wet logs crumble into ashy pillars. When I lay my head in her lap I’m not cold. Above me, her mouth makes words and above me the sky hangs dense like something primordial and above me three stars call themselves Polaris, dancing cheek to cheek so my eyes can perceive them.

Stars like pinpricks in the elasticity of the everything.

Stars like flecks of sand in black tar.

Stars like marshmallows bobbing in black water on the lake where I fished with my father.

Stars like powdered sugar sprinkled across asphalt.

When I feel lonely I think about two months ago. How we slipped out of our clothes and scrambled naked into clear, cold water. Cold knocking against our lungs, locking up limbs while traffic grumbled behind the sparse trees that can’t hide naked bodies, perched indelicately on sun-warmed rocks. Sleepy, yawning, stretching rocks. Rocks just beginning to wake up. Sunlight illuminates flecks of moisture caught in the fine raised hairs of her arms and backs as wind coaxes goosebumps out of hiding and the clothes huff in an impatient heap.

I want to unfold like something that unfolds slowly. Slip back into this business of breathing. I am more Me now than any version of this person. I am only lonely when I let myself be. I write letters to myself, all the words nobody else will say. I say:

"Here's the deal: you might not die this year… Maybe one day you will be old. You can say that now, right? Like you used to say 'Maybe one day I will be happy' and look: you wake up every morning, and you're grateful."

All my love, dearhearts.

-b