photos of sticks
and of some other things, but mostly sticks
THE STICK IN QUESTION: long, uniformly - weirdly - circular, like someone had decided to take a saw to a tree and measured out its dimensions right then and there, broad enough that you can whack it against your palm with a satifsying smack and have it not break into a thousand tiny splinters. its covered in rain water and has a strip of wood peeled off at the end, showing the lighter color underneath. theres so many fucking germs on this thing.
propping up your phone on the window sill because you cant vc or take good pictures that actually show the slip slide of rain into gutters but hell if you cant take a video of the fabric flapping in the wind, the glistening of the roofs and send it to him a thousand miles away, captioned HEY WE'RE HANGIN OUT. the air smells like cold and dust and faintly, something being fried. none of these are things you can send in a video.
so half the time you dont actively think of your friends - you dont really miss people in the way that would be a real bother. it slips in - like a thief in the night, you complain, and she laughs on the other end of the line because you're incapable of explaining a single damned thing to her but you can make silly references apparently - wiggles right into your sternum and the back of your head; this figurine reminds you of her. you keep a screenshot of post in your gallery because you want her to see it later.
if he was here you'd point out all the good sticks - which ones? trick question, all sticks are good sticks - because he likes to collect them and you'd never kept an eye out for sticks on the road before him but now you have pictures on your phone to send later and later becomes two weeks and melts into a month and the time blindness is half of it but maybe the problem is, you reflect, you would answer people more often if you were capable of missing them.
WIKIHOW TO MAKE SMALL TALK: 6. Push deeper into topics they seem passionate about.
because i want to hear about your day, you tell him patiently, not for the first time, and i forget to ask sometimes (A LOT) but that doesnt mean i dont want to hear about your day. the people you meet and the random flowers on the road and what kind of shenanigans youve stirred up today. please tell me about your day for the love of god
i'll try, he sends back, and well. you'll take it.
man, you never gave a fuck about sticks before. or proseka or the intricacies of familial relationships that arent even your own, or whatever newest beyblade she'd gotten. and she tells you about her birds and leaves 70+ messages about this game she's been playing recently. you dont have the context for half the stuff she tells you and she does the internet equivalent of squinting in your direction when you fumble through explaining why you think everyone else is wrong about this character, actually, and youll die on this hill. the last time you heard her voice was a week ago and you're already forgetting how it sounds, soft and quiet because its the middle of the night and you both should be asleep, really.
change and be changed and four months ago at the library when she slung an arm over you into a goodbye hug you didnt even feel a smidgen of anxiety anymore. you wanted to take that moment, stretch it out into taffy. further still, until its less of a memory and more hair thin strands in the wind from having been turned over one too many times. its just, the same thing where you keep listening to a song enough times until you get sick of it. its the best four hours of your life and youve still got an eye on the clock, counting down the minutes till you can leave.
you're counting down the days till july, till he comes back home. you're counting the sticks on the road and take shitty pictures that you keep forgetting to send to him. and you love him, or something incoherent that more or less amounts to the same sentiment.
and its still raining outside and he's sat on the window sill with you. anything for you, you tell him, half jesting and half completely serious, even if it means setting a billion reminders to actually text him back.
posted: 22 June 2024