First time writing in 10 years or so... thinking about time and life... all these unearthed memories I thought I'd lost. Seeing my earnest lust for life, all the glorious vulnerabilities of youth... an emotional experience to witness once more- a portal into my young heart. Recognizing the romance I still carry with me. Though my life has changed a lot since these early days. All of these road trips and bodies of water... all the luscious crushes. It's time to find this romance again, appreciate the beauty in the glittering grains of sand... I'm going to return here from time to time to track the romance in my life, how I carry it and cherish it, open myself to it... maybe write some painfully sincere poetry... this space is for me. For the sake of old times, I will do a free-write-

the distance between the vibrant fingers of my childhood an awakenings and my dull surfaces of grime and distaste has something to do with a need for a reawakening, somewhere along the way I fell asleep in the wheelwell of life, rattled in the hull with street dust flashing in my eyes... what do I miss? the feeling of blooming sensation within my body, the gorgeous expansions of connection that would emerge endlessly... What do I miss? the desire... the desire I feel now seems for a past or a future shrouded in fear... what do I carry with me now? along with this dust, a romance I still feel in the auras glowing around everything. a sharpening, and a releasing, all my weight I tried to carry in other people now I release it on my own, I don't need anyone's permission to love myself or to be in heat or in sadness or frustration. I see my friends, the ones of childhood wonder in wander, we harden and shapeshift, much apart. The sky is somehow different, the piercing buildings and their grinding gears are not the breaking rain filled beauties that I grew up with. This is something I miss so very much. when I sit in the grass and the sky glows so so big and I lay beneath it in wonder and everything is singing. we are a floating chorus. I miss this.