1am

I’m sitting here and the loudest thing is the ticking of this super cheap clock i have sitting next to my bed. I thought it would help me in my morning routine, but really it just fills the part of my brain that says “adults have clocks. college students use their cell phones.” so there it sits.

it’s past 1am. I’m never up this late. But I have this clay mask on that I’m letting sit and hoping that when i was it off it will take all my zits and acne and craziness that has taken over away with it. i never had this issue as a teen. but i guess it’s still a lot to ask of a clay mask.

what i’m really doing up is listening to the wind dance amongst the building making that whooshing noise like weather does in cities trapped between buildings and lives. that’s what living on the bottom floor in a house in the middle of campus does. it puts you in a position to be the center of it all. and the wind keeps coming, in waves like the ocean, in calm consistencies, in invisible and underestimated strength.

and i think of you.

i think of the time we spent together, of what it meant then and why sometimes it means everything and sometimes i wish it meant nothing because that would make the missing of you lessen. i think about how much you would have loved it here. how you’d be the person i’d tell this to instead of an idea in my head.

but the best thing about this is that it is only a thought. it leaves almost as quickly as it comes and i get pulled back into my very present reality.

someone laughs at a youtube video.

a door shuts.

my face mask tightens.

i pick at my nail polish.

and then the wind howls.

i pull back my curtain to see it. as if wind was something to watch instead of hear.

next i’m going to get up. ponder shutting my computer. wash my face. lay down under the covers of my bed and be enveloped in the precious moment that sleep comes.

and in the meantime i wait for the wind.