thoughts & ideas that float by

• do you ever wonder who lived in your room before you?
  • can you find traces of their soul, still hidden in the cracks of the doorframe or the peeling sticker-residue on the back wall or the broken ruby-gold bracelet stashed the top shelf of the closet?
  • do you ever wonder who will live in the room after you?
  • what will you leave behind?
  • will they wonder about you, too?
• my soul aches to be another.
  • what would it be like to be a flower? a tree, a pebble, a faraway star?
  • since i was little i always wondered what life would be like if i had been born something else. why, of all things, was i born human?
• i used to think, to write poetry, i must experience the extraordinary; to live on a revolving star and come back to tell the tale. now, i realize — maybe the most beautiful poetry is born of humanity. of living raw life, and finding the words to tell it back.
• i still wonder where the balloons i’ve lost have ended up.
  • if i released a message into the world, would it find somebody?
• if i sit still for long enough, will i, too, gather dust?
• dopamine is your body buzzing; serotonin is your heart blooming
• warmth, in all its forms
  • gentle, irrevocable love. a winter evening fireplace, a half-open oven of blueberry muffins 2 minutes over-baked. how warm water is when you finally tip it out of your ear. how your body is what kept it warm.
• what if rocks just tense up when we touch them?
• the timeless feeling of airport hallways
• we are all matter recycled and transformed from stardust; at the beginning and at the end (we will explode, and return to the universe)
• you never know that tomorrow will come until it already comes to be.
• what does the world look like through a toddler’s eyes?
  • how much clearer is the kitchen’s clock?
  • how much more vibrant is the sky, the grass, the sea?
  • what is it like to see anew?
• i am a mosaic of a soul; a shattered mirror, shards of glass, gold light refracting along jagged edges. i fill the hollow in me with someone else’s essence.
• how humanity has tricked itself into thinking we are ultimate and complex, when really we are just another part of the never-ending cycle of life and death; reproduction and survival; creation and destruction. in the end, we are no different than a daffodil.
• what if the moon overslept?
• leaving behind a crystal, a stone painted acrylic, somewhere - along the side of a bike trail road or in the grassy parking lot of your town park; wondering who will be the one to find it - whether that be tomorrow, or 40 years from now. i wonder about the permanence of my existence, how long my choices last, how long my legacy carries on through the little things i leave behind.
• our eyes see light differently than cameras see light. while in the camera lens, the sun’s rays dim and focus, in our eyes it radiates and blurs into the spokes of a brilliant star. i think that’s beautiful, in a way. we perceive light differently. we are so naturally starry-eyed, humanity.
• i miss when my fingertip was small enough to fit a raspberry crown. i miss plucking them off each finger, one by one, sweet bursts of fruit in my tiny mouth. when did my hands grow too big? i don’t even remember.
• how during a match of tennis, you make up for where the other is missing; when they hit low, you catch it and let it bounce. when they hit high, you wait and hit it with all your might. filling spaces in each others’ blindness, making up for each others’ shortcomings. it’s such a sport of reciprocation - zero, love, because you are too in love to let the other lose.
• memory gaps are so strange
  • i will never be able to understand how my younger brother does not have the same memories of, and love for, our old house, because he simply never lived in it. how does he walk into the tiny living room and not remember fondly where the tv once was, where we once sat with our faux-leather sofa and watched lego friends? how does he walk up those swirled stairs, take a step into the backyard, see the bush of blooming golden forsythia, and not be overwhelmed by nostalgia? how is this home only a house to him?
• why are humans so fragile?
  • it hurts me so much, hearing about other people’s deaths. i can only imagine the hurt their loved ones feel and it bothers me so much that they suffer & grieve so deeply, yet nobody truly understands their pain. if someone i loved passed, i would be sad beyond repair — but i know all i would get would be “i’m so sorry” and “we’re here for you;” and though it would be kind, it just wouldn’t be enough. they are not the ones who feel the true loss. i loathe death.
• whenever i see someone with earbuds on - passing by on the street, leaning by the park bench, waiting in line at a ramen restaurant - i always wonder what they’re listening to. i wonder how the world is colored depending on their choice of soundtrack. what are they seeing and hearing? i wish i could see the world through their eyes, hear it through their ears. their perception must be so different from mine.
• i wonder how many miniscule moments of my life are documented in the background of others’ pictures. how large of a trail have i left behind, being simply a silhouette in the background of a family photo, a scenic snapshot? how many footsteps do i have, engrained in random phones all over the world, that i don’t even know about?
• i wonder what it’s like to sit in a restaurant by the window and see someone walk by and peer into the glass… you think they’re looking inward to see inside, so you’re about to smile at them in the unlikely case that their eyes land on you — but their eyes are blank, looking at something in-between, and you realize that they’re just looking at their own reflection
• i love just thinking about umbrellas & their forced proximity if you have to share one. there is so much potential for clichés and little meet-cutes. they were designed for falling in love
• when i was young, my hair was curly, like pig’s tails or the swirling tides. i didn’t like it — i was 8, maybe, when i begged to have it straightened. now it’s straight, like ironed suits and flat ties or the As on my grade report, but all i want is to have my waves back
• growing up isn’t just doing your own taxes or paying the rent — it’s also becoming a passerby in a city park that families ask to take a picture for them, it’s shopping for furniture and wondering what sofa would look good with your living room walls. it’s a lot of little things alongside the huge.
• when you get into an empty elevator, just a few seconds ago there was someone else standing there, breathing that air and shoes on that tiled floor. sometimes i wonder who was there, who went from floor 6 to -2. where are they going? what were they doing? did they live on 6 or were they visiting a friend, family, someone they haven’t seen in 5 years? and yet here i am, standing in an empty elevator, air inside still warm with human breath, and i’ll never know who they were
• when we see a car, we see a faceless car, a heartless vehicle — not the person inside. the disparity between driving a car and feeling wholly human, then seeing other cars and seeing nothing but shaded windows and headlights, is strange and interesting
• how marginalized groups have almost been treated like spiders: when we have allowed them to live with us, we only feel comfortable if they hide away in their webs and dark corners coated with dust. you are only allowed to be here if you are out of our sight; if you are visible and trying to build something for yourself, you scare us.
  • i realized this when i began to speak to a spider hanging from the hanging light in my washroom. though i was scared of spiders, i realized how unfairly we see them — and began to realize how that parallels the history of humanity and how they treat those they do not know
• when i was young i would ask my dad questions like how is glass made? and why is the sky blue? and he would answer, from the edge of my bed in the warm evening quiet, and sit there until i fell asleep, because i was scared of sleeping alone. now when i ask silly whys, why is daylight savings on for longer than it is off, it’s a burnt-out and dismissive “i don’t know” 9 feet across the room, wasted minutes of asking pointless questions that could be solved with just a simple ctrl+t and a few seconds of keyboard clicks
• how our phones burn themselves out by endlessly searching for an internet connection when unconnected — fish out of water desperate for breath — but really, is it worth it to be connected all of the time? a fish out of water, a trap for the polar bear
• the older i get, the more i miss the things i used to be able to do as a kid. when i was young i learned to play the piano and i would despise practicing, as all children do... now i kind of wish i could do it again. i am starting to understand what my parents meant when they said they wish they had the chance to learn an instrument, speak a language, play a sport, etc. when they were younger, like i did then. isn’t it a shame that humanity realizes everything a little too late?
• the slow disappearance of a slice of cake, a box of chocolates, a cookie jar’s contents. communication through co-eating, alleviating each other’s guilt
• a funhouse mirror exposing all the silly parts of yourself you'd taken seriously before...
• i’m so scared of songs existing past my loved ones, because what do you mean there will be a day where the song my mom and dad used to love exists past their lifetimes? what do you mean i’ll have to listen to it, be reminded of them and their love when i was small, and know that though i can still hear the song they are no longer here? i couldn’t bear to listen to the song. i’m so scared