the kitchen counter

“rainy days and coffee breaks are my personal excuses to reminisce. and today I have both which is perfect because I saw you last night. I knew I would see you at some point again in life, but I didn’t think it was going to be last night.

it might’ve been the alcohol but my heart began to flutter before I even saw you walk into the bar. my body still has that intuition, it’s still connected to you somehow, catching the rays that you’re radiating. but tell me how do you keep weaving your way into my life even though it’s been four years of college and thousands of miles between us? you used to say I was always an “unfinished business”. you always wanted to claim me, but could never just appreciate me being there. then you left for school and I stayed here. I didn’t wait around, but we never did fully said goodbye to one another, we just avoided it. but here we are, our paths skirting next to each other on these high school streets. regret and words left unsaid create a fog that loves to choke the air from the room. flashbacks of us light this old and damp road into the past. and my heart tightens up at how we messed up our plans and our chance to be together. how we messed up each other. but when I see you I see second chances. I see us doing it right this time.

but now I’m sitting at my kitchen counter, wearing my flannel from last night and holding my mug of coffee that has gone cold. I’ve reheated it four times already and now I’m giving up. the rain has stopped and so has the feeling that we were supposed to work out. and that there’s nothing for me to miss anymore. catching your gaze from across the bar stirred an urge to take back those years in blazers and plaid skirts. but it was only a gaze. a fleeting moment. a break from reality. something that isn’t supposed to stay. and neither were you.”

the warmest city in Canada

“we wrote an email and sent it in on here the very same night without knowing.

and we still don’t know what the other thinks because our notes haven’t been published (perhaps we’re less lovely with words than we thought).

so tonight is the night i send a love letter to your face, the evening our romance either relapses or is relinquished.

here’s a spoiler: i’m back. you’re actually single this time. i’m gonna give you the damn sea even if it kills me.

i’m ready to take a chance, to take off my shirt, and love you as long as you’ll let me.

– no longer the other girl”

the sip

“Dear 2016,

Hi. I’m still in 2015 but I’m looking forward to seeing you. You’re gonna be great but you’ll probably disappoint me a few times. That’s okay because 2015 made me brave and strong. I can’t wait to see what 2016 does to me.

See you on the flip side,
A Dreamer“

worcester

“He has been my only. The author of so many of my firsts. The magician behind the curtain manipulating my future, my emotions, my every day. We’ve never shared a midnight New Year’s kiss. This year, when I am home alone holding our daughter and kissing her perfect cheeks for the last time in 2015, my promise will be to her. To her unborn sibling. To reclaim myself and show my babies how dreams change shape but never fade.”

pittsburgh

“twenty-sixteen.

every year, resolutions are made. people want to be a better person, or go to the gym everyday, or lose weight. the gym will be full of new years resolutioners for a week or two until they give up and life gets in the way. I think for the sixth year in a row my resolution is the same.

in 2015, I wanted love. not just any kind of love but I wanted the “do crazy things, over the moon” kind of love. well there’s 3 days left of 2015 and i haven’t found that love yet. I can’t help but wonder if God forgot about me. If God forgot that I want a happy ending too. I wonder If my plan for love ended in a cul-de-sac in my hometown years ago the last time i felt that way. It’s never a good feeling to think that God forgot about you, that the plan he has doesn’t exist, or that you just don’t get a happy ending.

Christmas was a time for engagements. I think i saw at least 10 engagements on Facebook in the last month. After the first couple, it’s almost a numbing feeling. You want to be happy, but the happiness is outweighed by sadness and concern, concern that your 24 year old friends have their lives together enough to be ready to spend it with someone else and you’re sitting in bed, binge watching TV and drinking a bottle of wine.

I just want to know if my love story exists. I want Nicholas Sparks to take a stab at writing me a happily ever after, hopefully not where my true love dies in a tragic accident (as so many of his stories end).

Despite it all, in 2016, I’m still hoping for love. The can’t sleep, can’t eat, over the moon kind of love. Love that people gush about and want to scream from the top of the mountains about. I just want to experience love in the truest sense, the sense that I don’t have to apologize or hide who I am. I’m going to keep hoping that God’s desk is messy, and my love story ends up at the top this year and he starts writing my story again.“

Woodstock, Georgia

“I slapped you in the face the night before, because I was drunk and you had been mean to me.

You were my constant friend for years. I’d seen you through so much and you returned the favor. Relationships, death, jobs, travel. We’d meet every couple of months and just catch up. Never spoken, always assumed, you were my person.

The next day we met because you wanted to clear the air, “I’ve always liked you, if things were different I would want to date you.”

I looked at you as we walked, the words tasting bitter as I said them “I think we’d make a terrible couple.”

Atlanta

“It’s Christmas night and I’m lying in my bed. I spent the whole day with my wonderful family and being showered with gifts. But I’m lying here unsuccesfully talking my tears into staying in my eyes all because I sat next to the tree watching my siblings open a dozen presents while I had one. I live a relatively lavish life and I’m so grateful, but all I can think about is “Did my parents forget about me?”

it’s Christmas night and I’m lying in my bed. I’m crying over not having enough presents, and I don’t know what’s worse, feeling like the unwanted holiday fruitcake or the complete idiocy and arrogance of my pain, but it hurts all the same.”

Habersham, Georgia

“we still text each other’s moms every single holiday, but we’re too prideful to text each other. I’m missing you, though. I’m always missing you.”

Birmingham

“You told me you were seeing someone new and they were coming to dinner with our friends that night. You introduced them to me, we ate and drank and then I cried the whole way home.

I don’t know what made me more upset: that you were my best friend I was in love with for four years…or the fact that you never told me you’re gay.”

Colombus, Ohio

“I keep holding my breath for the moment you realize that I’m too much work and I lug around twenty years worth of baggage that reeks of pain. I think I might pretend like its not there but some moments you catch whiffs of the stink and I cringe. If you open that baggage and see whats hiding, won’t you leave? There’s a part of me that wants you to; so I can prove to myself that I’m not love-able, that I’m better off alone. But there’s a growing part that begging you to open up all the bags and help me unpack. I don’t want you to do it for me, just support my folding and sorting. Oh, how that desire terrifies me.”