I feel compelled to see all these strange details put together. No year is totally irredeemable to me. I keep returning to what I wrote when I felt I could scarcely bare to do so. When I reread them I can see what I did not feel, but had nonetheless. It was all hope.

It’s a language yes, it whispers in your inner ear, but it’s also something imperceptible. It strikes a chord, one that says this is why you’re alive. Alive in the sense you were born of it, but also alive to find it. And you’re sure you’re made out of it in some primal way, maybe you carried it in you dormant but now it cannot be put out or forgotten.

Knowing the morning routine is not the same as knowing a birthday or a favorite color. The mundane is a witnessing that encompasses a being. Who knows you on a Tuesday? Wednesday? Who knows me at 1:00 pm and in February?

I enjoyed the way strangers were so easily projectable, the way you could connect to them for a fleeting moment. I envied their gravity to New York, the way they were tethered to a life with roles and responsibilities while mine were flimsy at best. I could leave the city with ease, no one knew I was there, no one depended on my staying.

I spent many mornings getting dressed early only to sit outside or simply staring out at five AM when I woke too early for even my mother to be waiting downstairs. I’d go outside then and stick my feet in the grassy dew and walk away with slippers made of lawn.

I was afraid of both the dark and the light. If it were too dark then I couldn’t see, but if it were too light then I was susceptible to being known and seen. The comforter beneath me offered no relief as we laid on top of it. Every decorative seam in horizontal lines road across me from neck to toes. If I could feel them in my skin that skin could be witnessed.

“I enjoy the familiarity of walking upstairs to find more rooms and being in hallways without other people above or below. I enjoy that there are no neighbors.”