there’s this moment in a conversation where you ask a question & they start tearing up a little bit. their eyes glisten. time freezes. they look away. & when they speak it’s like the first time they are naming something. & there is nothing more beautiful than that moment: that dawning, the shedding. bearing witness to that. in that moment that something is the only thing that matters to me. this is my definition of joy: the collapsing of borders, the re-unification, us. the revelations that come from being together: every feeling dependent on its predecessor to exist. the things we don’t get to talk about, but need to. why is it the things that are most important & dear to us are the ones we rarely get to say? i like those moments because they remind me that we need each other to learn, to feel, to realize, to be. i don’t do small talk because i am tired of feeling small — i want to overflow. when i was in high school i used to turn on (mediocre, but deeply charming in retrospect) indie music & have conversations with my girlfriend & we would eventually stop talking & just look at each other in the eyes & start tearing up. we would say that one line from perks of being a wallflower: “in that moment / i swear / we were infinite” & we would feel like we were in a movie or a music video, which made us feel important & greater than ourselves. something about the simulation of it all made it feel more real. i swear i never loved her more. what i like about a good conversation is it is cinematic: the lives we live are expansive, dramatic, whimsical, dynamic. my favorite actors are my friends. & our living is the art. our living is the art! so i just want to take out everyone in the world for hot chocolate or dinner or both & i want to ask all of the tough questions & i want to figure it out together, take out a second to feel the poignancy & urgency of our becoming: how we got here, what we lost along the way. the things we know & need, everything. nothing. infinity.
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