yesterday you sent me a message: a polite nudge that you meant as a kindness, but simultaneously revealed everything about you i'd forgotten on purpose. that you pray to the shiny, golden-haired women of the west coast — goddesses you chose long ago — who are no wiser than you or me, but nevertheless sit glowing on their pedestals, smugly chewing their cud. (like mother birds who eat poison and spit it back into their babies' beaks.)

friendship shouldn't be so tricky, or that's what i tell myself. still, i decided to stop writing love letters for people who don't know how to read. i thought i saw a light in you once, and then i watched it slowly flicker out. sometimes the ambulance comes too late. (i realized i don't know who you are, and i never did.)

i'm thinking a lot about dreams these days. i wrote an incredible song while i was asleep; you'll have to trust me on this. i tried to wake myself up to write it down, but slumber felt too good. i enjoy my stays on the dark side of the moon. i wonder if i belong there instead, and daylight is the real interlude. there's this book i read once, about a girl who spent a year sleeping. she took a lot of pills and teetered somewhere between life and death until she came to her senses eventually. (that's one way to leave it all behind.)

sometimes i, too, want to run away from myself, but i don't know how. where would i go? i'd have to forge a new identity. pick up a new skill. stop asking for so much. otherwise i'd open my phone and the same internet would await me. the same old songs would run on loop in my brain after being jostled from some hidden corner by the right word or sign. wherever i'd go, i'd still remember that i was running. (is life just a race back to the beginning, then?)