In Black and White

1.

I’ve spent the past few months chasing for feelings. Something stronger than vodka in my throat and the scent of that American Eagle perfume I sprayed all over that one snowy night in the Rock. Something stronger than Tell me about yourself in under three minutes and Keep trying, you’ll get there.

I've found that maybe there is a place between the hunt and this armchair in my hometown café where the flat white on my tongue feels just right: not too much milk, not too much espresso. Where his tears feel salty not just to my taste buds but to my arteries, where my heart pumps red blood just as mom told me it does on that dining table eight years ago.

I’m learning that there is only a sheet of paper that is sandwiched between freedom and sadness, but I cannot read the words I once could, its scribbles not illegible but rather foreign. I’m looking for the future and the past as an escape from the present, but they exist only in myself, a place inaccessible to me.

I think I’m starting to spot themes beyond my English lectures. How summer falls into autumn slowly, and then all at once. How day is light and night heavy, and how the devil doesn’t play so well in my idle hands. How the books I’ve read recently are points in a connect-the-dots game, constellating a projection that I’ve underlined and highlighted, but I’ve still yet to understand. I’m grasping at these fickle lines, but it’s as far and made-up as the Saturn I saw in that telescope 10 Decembers back.

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2.

When I started college, I began looking for something I didn’t know I lost. I searched for it everywhere: in the third floor room that only you and I know about, in Saturday mornings, in eavesdropped conversations in the Blue Room and in every black pupil I’ve stared into.

I realize now what I was looking for was left somewhere on I-10 between Houston and San Antonio and I was reaching for something that melted right as it hit the asphalt. Up in Providence, snow sticks and stays until it’s gray, so I’ve since learned there’s no such thing as black and white.

Here, spring is pink and autumn orange, but there is nothing more monochrome than my desire to make angels from what falls. I’ve learned that after dusk always comes dawn, and so I’ll leave bite marks in the moonlight until my teeth break.

Providence thinks I’m pretty, and I think it’s pretty, too.

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3.

I was told not to over-explain myself but I don’t know how to exist without justification. My mom always said that I had a loud presence, so I’m just hoping she was right.

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