Forgetting isn’t clean. It seems like nothing is anymore. Four years ago, I’d let a dream die and entered a new one, convincing myself rest would eventually come. My couch bed turned into a guest room which then, turned into a mattress on a floor.

I wrote a book for one of my closest friends as a way to help him not think about his sobriety. At the time, I remember categorizing everything by befores and afters. The intersection of this venn diagram, the alwayses, was little, if not nonexistent.

These curved lines have flattened now. Spheres have compressed into a singular rigid plane. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know how. Part of me knows the answer will never come as a singular thing.

In my head, it all just repeats.

For so long, I told myself this time line is an awful one. Why dream about a life that’s a ladder’s climb above the clouds? But then I think of honey,

I think of the drive between Dallas and home, all those small towns and small worlds. Why not compress further? Close the doors and draw the curtains, sustain in inches instead of miles.

It’s sort of like gravity in a way. There’s this pull to retreat, to return. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve really just been running in a circle rather than making any sort of progression, if that venn diagram has been beneath my feet all this time. I’d like to think I’m wrong, that everything currently happening has never happened before.

These difficulties are new and vast. They are ruinous, bred with a hunger that never quite evens out. I’ve argued with the sound of it. I’ve cut the vocal cords and killed the screens. “This will pass”, I say.

This will pass

This will pass

This will pass

Happiness is a fleeting feeling. Everything is.

So, this will pass

the same way it lingers.