this is a love letter.

blah.

running around chicago with a new boy, it's too warm out and we're too mean to each other. everytime he disappears somewhere, the last boy calls me and hangs up without leaving a message. we go to the zoo, yell at the sea lions and climb a fence to look at the warthog with the most tusks, soft pretzels with mustard and vegan chicago pizza with spinach, movies i've seen too often and jokes i've never heard before. i feel like myself again.

depressed on the subway to the airport. sitting next to each other doing crosswords, sly stealing answers. it's getting colder the farther out of the city the train takes us. you're late for work and i'm going to miss my plane. you remember not to bro hug me, but you're still late for work and my plane is delayed. delay delay delay. six hours later, im waiting for another train in newark, waiting for a bus in new brunswick, waiting outside the kitchen door because what am i doing here again and again and again. i could have a life somewhere else where i'm myself again, or i could keep coming home again and again and again and keep forgetting who i am and why i'm here.

the last boy tops it off. it's eight am, i'm making a mixtape, i get a text message from a number i'm trying to forget: 'i still think about you everyday, i wish we could talk.' it's seven am there (it's seven am in chicago, too) and the only thing we maybe still have in common is that neither of us can sleep if you're thinking about me a thousand miles away from one more place i don't belong.

i'm losing my mind & i just bought a drumset off craigslist. i'm too obsessed with the interpersonal. messy life.

sometimes, a mountain goats song will come on shuffle that i've either never actually heard before, or have just glossed over in the past, and it feels like it's not only the first time i've ever heard the mountain goats, but the first time i've ever heard music and certainly the first time i've ever heard someone say something meaningful and pretty and honest.

the songs are usually b-sides, though i guess that goes without saying. it revives all these "b-side" moments in my life, these tiny details that go unnoticed and forgotten, that hollywood exaggerates for people just a little bit prettier and a little but more naieve: listening to 'tallahassee' in my underwear and jumping on my bed when my roommate went home for the weekend and i opened the windows for the first time all year, watching almost invisible dust dance around the room. drinking naranja jarritos out of the bottle with a paper straw that glued itself shut, holding it with one hand and a cute boy grabbing the other one for the first time while walking down hamilton street in unseasonable november weather. thirty small children in an artists' colony in delhi swarming around you, screaming hello through broad mouthed smiles, white teeth against dark skin against dirty hands trying to shake yours as professionally as small naked businessman, but more organically excited. small temples where small men hand out crysanthmum flowers and tie red string around your wrists in cool twilight. watching 'the life aquatic' and falling asleep on someone's shoulder, waking up mad that the jaguar shark wasn't a dream but maybe more mad that it was a dream, just not one that i had ever had, and finding solace when we stood outside the theater in lincoln center on opening day, mitten to mitten, and kissed with our eyes open for the first time, collapse in giggles on the subway, and back to sleep on each others' shoulders when we finally make it home, together, for the first time or at least what felt like it.

things can just be so visual sometimes, or aural, or just numbingly real. i think i'm going to move somewhere cold for the winter and learn to appreciate something new everyday.