too many roads to cross too many bridges too many inches becoming centimetres slowly crawling timezone over timezone through mountains and planes into plain sight. i see you and i do not want and i see you and i do and all the helplessness rises up again and again and again. teach me the sounds of moving and splashing and dokidoki and jumping and glitter and mochimochi and squelching after a long day of rain and the sound that minds make when the spark is shared when the shock is spared when we pair words when we fare well in the worlds apart we inhabit. at least it was here, right? at least we did not count the reasons we should stay they remain they maintain they are still also here still reasons still valid they still count. i do not want to feel how much it hurts or how much joy it brings but i do, i let it swell and inflate and modulate my lungs and stomach. i choose books and screens and pages that tell me what i’ve left where i’ve been when i’ve said which instincts we’ve followed and what lines we’ve crossed and what we leave behind. so we leave traces we leave marks we leave signs. and we fall. and we leave. believe when i say that books were made for this that books were made out of this that oceans were made out of rivers for stars and bears and nights to shine that moon and sun are one and we count to five and sleep, at last.

before we got lost
our words carved the paths we took.
just read back, and smile