September 23, 2025

where were we? **

Making miniature books one minute and journaling under the trees the next.
Looking for our golden ticket at the Natural History Museum or our updated
credit report or a limited-time deal on flights to Paris. There were cookies
and kickoff games, corn mazes and vindaloo recipes, vintage handkerchiefs and
domain name renewals. Weekends were abstract, accompanied invariably
by a feeling we didn’t quite belong. The opposite of a tourist attraction.
We said we missed those desserts you never see anymore, but really,
what we meant was that memory of how easy it used to be to make up
after a fight, how quickly we could loosen the friction of an impasse, gather
into a confluence of living room pillows, under which we’d duck and resurface
in a rowdy theater of concealment and recovery. Now, no matter the fence posts
we stake in the ground, we still imagine a figure rowing in on an inflatable
boat, or taking the slow road, or stitching a cape. And we kick a little at the dirt,
hoping the clot of dust will rise like a beacon, that someone will find us.

** This is a stitched piece, composed from fragments of email subject lines.