T h e W i n t e r of A i r
“Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there, thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home. Back to the safety of Mothers and Fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cats and dogs.
You start to think about the comfort of a number that used to be saved in your phone, and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else, but you. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and at the same time feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.”