It’s been a while since I’ve showed up here. I took a necessary break — from my newsletter, from Instagram, from other online outlets. I’ve had to show up for myself in a fiercer, firmer way the last few months and I frankly didn’t have the energy to show up online. I needed to do some work behind the scenes; wanted to more presently tend to life transitions, relationships, my creative life.
I’ve spent a lot of time writing these last couple of months and I wanted to share some of that writing. These aren’t the full pieces but snippets I’ve arranged. Some are for myself and some I’ve submitted for publication (🤞🏻). I’m excited to be back here with you and share my writing in a space that has always felt much more capacious and breathable than, say, Instagram. I’ll be going off Instagram again sometime soon so find me here! And please share with your pals if you feel so inclined 💋
⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆
Learning to Stay in Winter
Each year I anticipate the onset of that frenzied impulse to leave. But this winter feels different. I have been coming to the same place each day, finding comfort in the consistency, counting it as a daily delight. Today, there are ice sculptures everywhere, the shape of waves solidified in midair. Some have whipped peaks like meringue. Others have lacerations, as if they formed around some sturdy stick but then lost it. How harried the water must have been to form them, and how hard to imagine now, given that the surface of the water is breathlessly still.
I wipe the snow off a makeshift bench and lay my body flat on it. I watch two birds silently slice through the sky above me and I listen for the downstroke of their wings, that whoosh, and their occasional call, that rattling percussion in their throats.
To my right, the weight of water smacking underneath thick slabs of ice. To my left, the low hum of the city water pump facility. Both soothing in their own right.
I pull my scarf down under my chin, letting the sun drape over the entirety of my face.
Here, I don’t have to prove my desirability.
Here, I don’t feel the urge to leave.
Here, I remember that change is better traced in the same place.
⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆
On Platonic Intimacy
Before experiencing deep friendship, I contorted myself around the preferences of potential romantic prospects. I had a fierce proclivity towards partnership, which makes sense, given that we’ve been overfed the idea that romantic love is of the highest form. I love partnership, I do, but I am not willing to cast aside other crucial forms of intimacy for it, including platonic.
Platonic intimacy is defined as a deep connection that is non-romantic and non-sexual in nature. The first thing I think about when I read this definition is how my friends and I are constantly challenging this notion, butting up against what friendship has been conventionally characterized by. My own friendships blur these lines as we invite romance, intimacy, and eroticism into our connections. Things that have been historically reserved for partners are making their way into my own friendships, and many others.
More and more – in my close circle and wider community – I see the ways people are forming their futures around friendship. There is talk of buying land together, raising kids together, splitting finances, carrying out weekly rituals, putting sleepovers in the calendar. My friends and I joke that we’d send a sexy selfie to each other before we’d send one to a partner or lover. We are reserving the most precious parts of ourselves for friendship.
We don’t have as many scripts or models for friendship in our society. We are given ideas around how to date, how to maintain a healthy partnership, and how to honorably bow out of one. But when it comes to friendship, we aren’t given as many guidelines for how to tend to its evolution.
Yet, I have experienced some of the purest forms of intimacy in the embrace of my friends. I have known the depths of devotion through how my closest friends and I show up for each other. I have experienced some of the most stinging heartbreak during friend fallouts.
⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆
After Care
When I lower my lustful body over his, I plunge into a nest of hair, the light obscured as I move closer to his face, my open mouth suspended over his as we breathe into each other. I brace myself, my hands melding into the soft bed on either side of his head as we focus on the movement of our hips and listen to our smacking bellies.
After we finish, I lay on his chest and rake my fingers through his hair, feeling the sweat from his scalp catch on my fingertips. Eventually he gets up to dress himself, sits on the edge of my bed to pull on his socks. I waddle on my knees across the bed to sit behind him. I ask if I can fix his sex-strewn hair.
As I gather his thick curls in one hand, as if holding a bunch of stems, I think about how strange it is that we go from hard and assertive – our bodies announcing their desires – to soft and reflective. How quickly we go from tangled up in each other’s limbs to two separate, boundaried bodies again. I tie his hair in a bun atop his head, inspecting my work and making sure every curl is tucked in. When he leaves I feel a slight pang of loneliness and relief, the two faces of singlehood I’ve been dancing between.