I asked if it was okay that I had made you into something of a fantasy and you said yes. We had a conversation about the spaces we create for words unsaid. I mentioned my love of letters, correspondence, and how intimacy is achieved through text based mediums. I told you about my daydreams. There’s songs I can’t stop listening to “postcard,” “I’m Swimming, “Hanging on the Telephone.” Since your departure, I’ve thought about filling a space with things I want to say to you but won’t. It seemed tedious and somehow cruel, but I’m on the train and I’m thinking about you.
I’m working on being busy. I have a couple relationships that get a lot of my time and labor and I don’t know that they should. I’m working on backing off, stepping away. When the tide recedes what is left in its wake? If I pull back what is created in my shape? I expect something sparse, because much like the ocean, I am a force that comes crashing down on most of my relationships-a wave against the shore. If the wave stops crashing, what happens to the shore?
I’ve been thinking about you and how you’ve been backing off, stepping away, pulling back. I wonder what’s left in the wake of your wave. What has been created in your shape?
I’ve been thinking about daydreams. Daydreams as the creation of a language. Daydreams as a means of articulating Utopias. I read something that asked me to “daydream in technicolor” and these were the richest.
I have an apartment, and someone is in it. Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s someone else. It’s morning and I’m in the kitchen making coffee, listening to one of three songs. Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s someone else. I’m dancing slow and alone with my eyes closed and the someone comes up behind me and there’s arms and hands coiled together, the warmth of a secret shared. It unfolds differently depending on who’s there. Sometimes it’s you and we are getting dressed together and we are going to a bookstore and there’s excited whispers and warmth that rains down around the both of us. Sometimes I’m on the train and it’s the someone else and we are heading into the city and I’m sitting and they’re standing between my legs and in between stops they reach down and rest their hand around my neck and I am theirs completely.
I’ve been thinking about daydreams as a means of articulating boundaries-choosing who’s allowed in and as a result, who isn’t. Building a world and creating borders. I am a world and my daydreams are it’s borders.
You’re here and we are at the beach and in the water and you’re teasing me further out, beyond what I’m comfortable with. The tide is rough and I’m nervous but you’re there and when the water pulls back and high up and you grab me close and kiss me and we are out in the water like that for so long. We drive back into the city and you’re in the passenger seat and I’m singing and I can feel your eyes on me.
Someone else is here and in my apartment and it’s quiet and calm and a little sad. I make a decision and then we are outside and getting a car and driving far upstate. We hike through trees and don’t say much. It’s a hard hike but they are there and pulling me up and once we reach the end we sit for a long time and I lean over and kiss them and they pull me closer and kiss me back. We drive back into the city and they’re. in the passenger seat and I’m singing and I can feel their eyes on me then we are at my apartment and we’re showering together and we’re in my bed and they pull me close and say thank you.
I want to know everyone’s daydreams. What are yours? When you can create space completely unencumbered, what does it look like? A utopia.
I’ve been thinking about people as worlds, daydreams as their language, and friendships as diplomacy. Fighting war not wars, destroying power not people. I want to take a tour of worlds. I want to learn your language. I want to see how the ocean moves along your shores. I want our worlds to collide. But some worlds aren’t compatible. Some worlds, when introduced to each other, exert an incredible capacity for destruction. Irreconcilable. Uninhabitable. A hurricane.
My world is occupied, like a territory. My language has been pieced together from many failed attempts at diplomacy. Spaces created for words that are then lost in translation. My shores are marred, my ocean reigned by tropical winds.
Ive been thinking about the violence of love and intimacy as manifested by a colonization. The violence of love and intimacy as forced entry. I’ve said I don’t make people the center of my world but I do. When I met you, did I invade? Or did you surmount my world and learn my native tongue?
But now the tide has receded and I am left in the wake of your wave. You retreated to fortify your borders. An armistice.
I want to avoid starting a war but my secrets always come out at night and I haven’t been sleeping. There’s constant battle between texting first and keeping you at the bottom, buried beneath people who have occupied me longer. Im negotiating with millennial dilemmas-being ghosted and when to unfriend. I’m fighting texting you and deleting your thread. I don’t think of ghosting as an unexpected or communicated departure. It feels more like someone paused while they passed through you. Its the space that’s created when they back off, step away, pull back. You’ve made me feel like the shore and I’m hoping you’ll return like the tide. Controlled by the moon, I hope your absence is lunar.
I’ve been thinking about friendships where fantasy is the strongest. Ive been thinking about where and with who my daydreams are in technicolor, where and with who the language of my daydreams is understood. Ive been thinking about you.
