this is a breakup letter.
for months on end i have chronicled my reeling, the aftershocks of a grief that left me in a sheltered, silent summer, one populated with only the colour and light i saw fit to let into an inner world that because increasingly small and neurotic. i could handle meeting people, for a few hours, as long as i didn’t know them that well, as long as they didn’t know me. i could handle hiding in the back of my lab with a handful of histology images and a quiet desire to prove myself. i could handle anything that let me live outside my own head, even for a solitary second, even if it ended up feeling like a dream. my dreams were a lot less kind than wakefulness: i’d get everything i wanted, only to have it snatched away by the burn of a grey sunrise. but i digress.
as a long-time collector of words and phrases, a lifelong lover of poetry and prose, i’ve decided to take my own advice and start living a life i want to document. i want the next editions of this newsletter to be rife with new stories, even if they’re more heartbreaks, and blurry pictures from my own digital camera. i want to find the words to explain how physics is like poetry, how poetry is like creation, how you can hate a city for your entire life and convince yourself it’s worth falling in love with. i want my existence to move beyond being cerebral and solitary.
summer is taking her final bow. dry and hot, winds sweeping over the pavement, the true end of the year. the old, having been evacuated to this teenage mausoleum, are safely gone to make way for the new. i have a lot of hopes for this autumn. i have a lot i want to do.
this is not a breakup letter, though, because i will be writing to you again—soon, i hope—with new material.
until then, you got all my love,
arden.
Long-time lurker/reader here—your words are beautiful, and I really hope your next few months are bright and joyous. You'll be in prayers! :)