by Madisen Kuhn
can i call you today or tomorrow
do you miss me
i read these texts from last october and told you:
kinda miss the old u
to which you replied:
really?
i thought i was worse
more reckless
so i clarified:
i mean the way you texted me
nice being told ur incredible u know
and you said:
i was saying that and also being terrible tho
and you were right.
it’s easy to look back and romanticize the bits of time when you were first getting to know someone. both of you were looking at each other the same way you have to look at the sun when it’s in the middle of the sky; squinting because it’s so bright. then once you get to know them deeply, you look at them the same way you look at the moon—you can stare at it for hours, mesmerized by its glow, and not say a word. in the beginning, you see an incomplete version of someone. as time goes on, you begin to see someone fully, and you no longer have to wear your polarized ray-bans, and somehow that makes it feel less significant, when really, it’s the opposite,
because now, it’s real.
i have to remind myself that:
1. whenever he wakes up in a half-asleep daze, he always reaches for me, or kisses me, or rubs his thumb on the back of my hand, and pulls me closer
2. sitting in the passenger seat as I drove around aimlessly for an hour and a half on new year’s eve because i was upset and didn’t want to be at home, he told me in the 7-eleven parking lot while i cried at 1 a.m., “i think you’re being too hard on yourself”
3. spending hours caring for my dog when she was ill
4. buying last-minute christmas gifts the day before christmas eve and wrapping an impossible-to-wrap basketball for my brother
5. encouraging me to brush my teeth after i’ve already gotten in bed despite my whiny protests
6. not taking my bullshit
7. listening to 2009 alternative rock in his car with a box of krispy kreme doughnuts in my lap
8. meaning everything he says
—is better than any mushy text message from when he barely knew me.
(i guess in some way we’re always romanticizing something. in my attempt to explain that the romanticizing that happens in the beginning stages of relationships pales in comparison to the vulnerability, authenticity, and selflessness of deeper human connection, i romanticized very normal scenarios and may have painted them to be more significant than they probably were.)
sometimes, i look at him and it feels like he’s the only person i ever want to know. other times, i look at him and think about what a beautiful first love he was, and how i’ll always remember the special space in time we shared, but in my bones i feel there is more for me to feel elsewhere. maybe that’s just me coping.
things with us aren’t perfect, which i’d say should be expected of any relationship. and maybe things with us aren’t even what they’re supposed to be, but i’m nineteen, and i’ve never kissed anyone else, and i’m not sure how i’m supposed to know what is and what is not worth fighting for. all i know is that i care for him, very much.
she would want you to
this morning, i stood in a doorway and cried because leaving is hard. i drove an hour home and listened to bear’s den on repeat.
this afternoon, i drank hot apple cider and walked around old towne in a dress and couldn’t believe how nice it felt outside in december. i picked up a newspaper and did the crossword and sudoku. i felt like my grandmother.
this evening, i cleaned out my dresser drawers and filled up an entire trash bag with clutter. i ate chinese takeout and played monopoly with my dad and laughed while watching angel attack the new squeaky unicorn toy i bought her.
tonight, i’m thinking about the beauty of embracing life’s chaos with knowing that we can’t choose a lot of things, but we can choose to be good people. we can choose to love without ulterior motives, and to be stronger than our emotions make us feel, and to always keep spinning forward. it’s all okay, it always will be.
beautiful alone
i started seeing the stars brighter when you left. started seeing myself brighter. before, all i could see was
y o u .
i could barely see myself. my soul was starving and my heart worn, falling into bed every night without taking time to change the sheets. i hate to admit it, but i think i forgot how to be myself once i had you. maybe it was the timing, and maybe i was just divided—my feet in two doorways, leaving one place and entering another. i was stuck in the hallway with starch-white walls and no light. and i ignored it because i could, because i had you to distract me. but now i can’t avoid it. i look at my life now and see it as cold, hard clay, aching for my hands to turn it into something beautiful, something with meaning. everything is falling, and i’m surrounded by empty water, but i feel like i’m being reborn. i forgot how to look at the world through my rose-colored glasses; lost them in my mother’s house and settled for grey. that isn’t me. maybe i was too crowded by rosebushes smothering me from seeing any sort of sunlight, but now the soil is clear and all i can do is let the sun touch me until i turn into something just as beautiful alone.
my first kiss
i had a temperature of one hundred point five and i’d puked on the train on the way to see him. it was the first time i’d ever been close to anyone, really close, so close it felt like my skin was on fire (but looking back, maybe that was just the fever). he held me on his mom’s blue couch; his dog (who was named after a rapper and smelled like pumpkin because he’d just returned from the groomer’s) lay at our feet. i felt nervous, excited, dizzy. we watched the office. he gave me tylenol. i ate chicken noodle soup on his floor. we sat back to back and i laughed at how ridiculous we already were together; how comfortable i already felt with him. i was always comfortable with him. there was silence, but not the type that felt echo-y. it was cliché and it wasn’t. we laid on his bed and watched television until the sun set; pushed his curtains aside and looked at the moon like we did in his car on the first night we met. he said the moonlight was painting me. dragging fingers across my skin, he labeled my bones. i remember him kissing my face so many times i was afraid he’d accidentally miss and kiss my lips and the thing i’d been saving for eighteen years would suddenly be gone. but then hours later, after hours and hours of learning the art of being close, i kissed him. and i’ve kissed no one else since.
rest
i wrote about a boy the night we met, glasses and a polka-dot shirt i never thought would leave the stars and trees of that early morning in august. it felt like a lunar eclipse, a moment where i stood with my face up to the sky, straight on and uninhibited, but never expecting the moment to stay. moments like these come and go, and are accepted as fleeting; special dates to mark on the calendar, not penciled in on every square. i believed that he was fleeting. that my moons would always be grey. yet, i kept writing about him, a crimson moon with a recurring theme of crimson feeling—full of passion, anger, pain. i felt more inclined to write about him when my skin would crawl, rather than when my heart would flutter. maybe it was because our hearts were always beating, but never in time with one another. i was afraid that my poems would become gravestones, filling a cemetery of our almost love, hurtful reminders of what i’d never fully had until,
now
my heartstrings are completely entangled with his, a mess of indistinguishable shades of lavender that hum melodies of both obsession and safety. when i left him in those early august hours, my dreams of him faded the next morning. they turned to dust as soon as the sun touched the horizon, for four hundred and seventy-two days. i thought i’d lost something i’d never get back. i did. i watched our mercurial infatuation die, and from its ashes rose a love like nothing i’d ever known. and now my dreams of him stretch into the abyss of time, eager and familiar, as if there’s only ever been crimson moons hanging in the sky.
p.s.
i am overwhelmingly in love and it is the most peaceful yet exhilarating feeling in the entire world. i feel like rain, a tornado, and the sun peeking out from behind the clouds after a violent storm, all at the same time. i am a mess of contentment and wonder.
he is all i’ve ever wanted.
june
an afternoon accompanied by
rushing water and rustling trees,
the scent of a spruce candle burning,
i recalled that fire is often described as
something unapologetic,
a force that burns through forests
with resilience, and power, and no inclination to look
back; this is something i’ve spent my whole life trying
to be
but i saw myself in the flame of a candle
burning in a different light,
i saw something soft, and warm, and calm
something reborn, consumed
whipping itself back and forth as the wind blows it,
dancing from side to side like an eager child
it makes no effort to keep still
it accepts the movement, the wind, the chaos
and as it lets itself go,
as the wax melts down
slowly
slowly
slowly
it glows.
forget-me-not
“you’ve changed.”
digs itself between your ribs
gripped by the hands of someone
who had already painted their portrait of you
but then you came along and sprinkled
rose-colored glitter across your cheeks
dragged sky-blue painted fingertips
down the sides of your face
exhale deeply
dust off your hands
different looks like ghosts to some;
they don’t see people as perennial flowers, ones that
bloom in the summer, but wither by winter
only to bud again as something new in the spring
they assume autumn’s mess of orange and brown is the
end—
that things cannot be reborn
so clenched fists punch holes through canvas
leaving red-glittered knuckles and
spit that looks like teardrops
without considering that maybe blue
has always been your color
gap
lulls of silence—
wide-open meditative spaces
where everything is washed
and vacant,
stretching on into pale skies
in every direction,
void of anything
it is lonely, maddening,
a desert, my home
where i feel very small,
where there is nothing
to run towards—
they haunt me like shadows looming
on bedroom ceilings
above twin beds,
where i lie below, motionless
with a dream catcher
hanging on the wall above
my messy, braided hair and
chapped lips buried
into a pillow,
empty
the first year
we drove up the coast with the wind lapping our cheeks, violently whipping my hair into my mouth in that way that’s both annoying and careless—you keep the windows down even though the wet strands repetitively collide with your eyelashes; you squint and laugh and show your teeth for bugs to get stuck in between.
i sat in the passenger seat for most of the trip, and when we switched in the afternoon, i had to pull over twice in south carolinian driveways because i felt like i couldn’t breathe. he didn’t ask me if i needed him to take over, didn’t give me the out that i desperately wanted. because that was what i wanted, right? i was told that girls lie asleep on beds of thorns and only kisses make them feel alive. i was told that this is what i should dream of.
instead, he sat with me, patiently, and told me i was okay. i’d take a deep breath, sip the arizona sweet tea that he bought for me at 7-eleven, and back out of gravel roads, back onto the long stretch of highway ahead, and start again. and again. two hours in, with the windows back down—because i knew there was more air on earth than my lungs could ever hold—i listened to tori kelly’s rendition of “baby, baby,” and with the entire sun in my eyes, i thought, this is what it’s like to be okay.
i don’t know how this fell into my lap. this person who bugs me with too many questions and falls asleep twenty minutes into movies and forgets to turn my headlights on when he drives my car.
this person who introduced me to falafel, and philadelphia, and nickel creek. this person who pushes me and grows with me and doesn’t let me settle or scrape by because he sees more in me than i see in myself.
most of the time it makes me want to scream, because he won’t let me hide away in my knitted blankets and fuzzy socks, believing i can be perfectly happy with mediocrity and binge-watching stranger things in the dark. but then i look at him, with his ginormous brown eyes that never shut, always ready to let himself be consumed by everything around him, and realize that neither of us was ever meant for ordinary.
philadelphia
it’s fascinating to observe how different surroundings affect my spirit. christopher and i are staying in a studio apartment next to rittenhouse square. it’s thoughtfully decorated and minimalistic, with artwork on the walls and mixed patterns. mrs. meyer’s basil-scented hand soap in the bathroom, records on the bookshelf, and hardwood floors. walking on the sidewalks of buzzing streets with the sun beating down on my face—through a park crowded by people on benches, sitting in the grass, a group of moms with their toddlers on colorful duvets, dogs lying in the shade, both businessmen and women in spandex meeting friends for lunch. being alone—it makes me feel surrounded and empowered. i feel inspired and capable of achieving greater things than what i am currently experiencing. being here provokes an eagerness to inspect all the areas of life in which i am lacking. to tear down the wallpaper and roll on fresh paint. right now, i feel i am someone who is cold, insecure, nervous, idle. i am not the person i dream of being. i want to be warm and joyful, like i used to be before i decided i was too fucked up. i crave harmony in my relationships—i want to be better at considering others’ pain, and understanding their points of view without making snap judgments. i want to be patient. i want to be the free spirit i know that i am, not limited by my anxiety or depression. i want to be independent, like i feel when i walk by myself in the city. i want to look at other girls and see loveliness rather than competition. i want to be so content with who i am that i forget to consider myself at all—instead, i just exist. i want to be self-aware, to know exactly what i want and need, and to go after it without hesitation. i want to chase the life i envision for myself. this is a start.
disciples
the only thing that inspired me today
was washing my feet in the shower
i noticed it wasn’t something i do very often
a task neglected by staring contests with productivity
i won’t blink first
i won’t slow down
it felt innocent, and intimate, and thoughtful
and so, so normal; normalcy that i craved
with burning water running down my back
i bought a couch for a dream
i’ll be living in
one week from now
where every day will begin and end
with him
i’ll remind us both to wash our feet
better times
too often we find ourselves either chasing the future or trapped in the past; grasping for moments that always feel just out of reach, or suffocating in memories that keep us from sleep—both preventing us from fully embracing the present. we get stuck on “the good ole days,” convinced things will never be as good as they once were. we
become ghosts living in places that don’t exist yet, thinking happiness will only find us after we’ve achieved all the checks on our lives’ to-do lists. once i graduate, i’ll be happy; once i get a good job, i’ll be happy; once i move to new york city, i’ll be happy. we get so fixated on every level of consciousness that isn’t embracing the current. but maybe it’s time to stop letting our minds wander to places that are gone, or haven’t arrived yet. maybe it’s time to open the curtains and feel the sun on our skin and realize that existence is a series of nows. maybe it’s time to start realizing that the best times aren’t behind us, and better times aren’t ahead of us—better times are here, and they’re happening right now.
hurry up, we don’t have time to worry
sitting on your best friend’s couch at 11 p.m., slightly sunburnt with a hoarse voice, haven’t had time to breathe since last tuesday, i am exhausted in the best way and eager, rather than terrified, to face it all again tomorrow.
as long as i don’t stop living
the past several days have been spent in cars packed with all our possessions, driving from obligation to obligation. i used to be surrounded by silence and static. each day would blend with the ones before and after it—a repetitive song of waking up, feeling sad, and hoping tomorrow would be better. i used to like being alone because no one could ask how i was doing, but then i grew afraid of being alone because no one would be there to save me if i wasn’t okay. i was sick without a fever to prove it. it’s funny how quickly things can change. i can’t remember the last time i sat still and knew i’d be sitting still for a while. i keep moving, with the same feelings in my chest, the only difference is i don’t let them freeze my feet. i hated my therapist when she told me, “it’ll never go away, but you can learn to live with it.” i wanted it to vanish like a bad dream in morning sunlight—a dried-up worm on the sidewalk that quickly turns to dust. i tried hiding in my closet, tried medicine, tried jesus. i existed without ever really doing anything at all, until what i wanted was worth being afraid. now i ride on trains, fly in planes, and drive hours and hours with only the wind and my dog as my company. i scream and cry until my eyes are bloodshot and tired, but i do not look back. days are so crammed together that taking an hour to write a poem is like hastily pulling teeth. soon, we’ll be moved into our apartment and i’ll cook breakfast in the mornings and walk the dogs in the afternoon and read by the pool. i’ll paint, practice piano, start going to therapy again. life will be just as full, but less frantic. sleeping on mattresses that aren’t mine is fun for a little while, and much better than the days when i was afraid to leave my own bed, but i’m ready to slow down again, even if i have to convince myself that it’s okay to not be moving at a million miles an hour. as long as i don’t stop living.