i boil water and listen to kishi bashi

my substack is back here is a treat that i wrote in october (i dont feel like this anymore) in honor of Grace and Sonya and Margaret visiting for my birthday

now, the air is cool again the air is cool and it is fall again and im thinking of you again. i always write about what i wish would happen but sometimes i think of what is good, what already has

suddenly im listening to kishi bashi again, a song for you again, just like in the vintage store the day you put makeup on my cheeks in the doorway of your bathroom the day your dad came to visit you for your birthday the air was cold the way it can only be when something is new.

something was new before i got hit with a bottle of jungle juice walking you home when i knew i liked you before i knew how much yet when i put on my brown jacket and blue corduroys and my feet walked me to my intermediate fiction class

i stood in the kitchen boiling water i was making ravioli and grace was in the shower. now i boil water while the cool air makes her shape around me, i’m making something new with no one new and the cool air blows through the shape of my old roommate who is somewhere far away.

all of the facets of my day to day are gone

replaced with new ones

i don’t use the cheap body spray anymore i don’t wear the calvins with the blue waistband anymore i don’t pick at my fingernails except when i do, i live in a real house with real dark woodworking i sleep in a real bed that didn’t used to belong to someone i grew to hate i go to the rock climbing gym in my new shoes and crack my knees against the plastic rocks.

i walk down to the brick balconies i see grace i dig my gold key into the front door by accident and i leave a mark it looks like sonya i hear margaret when i close my eyes, people who still live just somewhere without me i walk anywhere i go everywhere and you and i make eye contact but it feels perverse and strange.

when sonya moved out and i moved in i cried because i’d miss her i cried because my grandpa was dying i cried and she gave me a new tube of toothpaste. the air is cool again the air is cool and it is fall again and my grandpa is gone, just like the toothpaste, i threw the empty tube out and the leaves blew in.