I have this daydream.
Where I’m walking home. It’s close to summer. Or maybe not close, but the first day the idea is taking shape in the weather. When looking ahead at the forecast you see the rest of the week is following this lead. I’m with someone who has gone to a bar with me to see some friends and now we have left to go back home together. On the outskirts of the meatpacking district where the streets on occasion come together with cobblestone, not a single car is before or behind us. He is looking to the left where the restaurants are brimming with life. The sound of plates scraped with silverware from people who have been dying to get out. Their conversations spilling in front of us like a flood. We’ve needed it though, like the air itself has been dry too long. And there is no longer the dire need to enjoy every last moment in the sun in case it gets cold again because we trust it won’t be cold again, not for a long time, not until we have missed it so much that it arrives like relief.
We are not clumsy people but we are aimless which can often look clumsy. Walking roundly, bow-legged, not quite forward but onward just the same. I’m not thinking really of how we feel for each other. I don’t need to. We have already said I love you. It is something understood between us, said always, seen often like this very moment where we are looking in different places but heading in the same direction. Thinking the same simple thought: let's linger on our way home. Even though we have all night, even though we will not be parting ways, there is something to savor about having too much time to know what to do with. It is clear too that the I love you that isn’t spoken now will certainly be spoken later. Before we need to think to ask for it, falling out as all conversations seem to in the warmer weather. Maybe we are reminded by the casualness of the outdoor dinner guests or maybe that is the way we always are.
Walking diagonally across the street, nearing the sidewalk once more I like to imagine how it would feel for this person to pull me in with a hand around the shoulder. The tension of an arm not mine, gentle and made on a current I was already heading in any way, pulling with the innocent kind of desire to have someone closer than they were before. Our minds idle, our hands too. Now there was something for them to do. Quickly, before anyone would see, a kiss on the temple which makes me blush just writing because it is a secret I often catch between couples on accident and a deep affection to give even when it is quick.
Until we hit the corner and the hands drop and head for pockets. Rejoining the flow of a busier street and being polite about the love we have which, even when we are trying, radiates between us. An impossible task to conceal but we will do our best. We make our way home where the sun will fall through the windows to illuminate the dust of the room. A bed will be unmade by our falling into it because we’re tired, because I am always tired. A bathroom with two toothbrushes in different colors and bottles with no one’s names on them because we know where one person ends and the other begins most of the time. No words are spoken here, just a closeness which is like speaking if you’ve ever had it. Where questions arise and the answers are said in the crossing the room with the thing you’d been looking for because in some ways you have always been looking for it. Then I must admit there is one last kiss I dream about. Placed between my shoulder blades before we fall into a deep and comfortable sleep which is only made available when you are so sure of the person next to you. Before at last, the dream has ended.
Every summer I think of this dream and every summer I think the following June it is waiting for me. I’m still waiting, but I won’t be forever. Perhaps it will not occur in its every detail but in essence. That life could exist because of and between me and another. Where the mightiness of living and doing somehow gives way to the tangling and intertwining of two people. How it happens without real reason besides that it is supposed to. I dream of love as something so spoken it becomes unspoken. One day I think I will have the courage. For now, I’m often so afraid I can’t move.
Yet I must and I will because I have done it before and once, only once, does it have to work out to be worth it. So perhaps it will arrive like this, this dream. Not on the streets of the city but the valleys of the mind and avenues of a heart which open for one another. Clearing for the smallest favor, of asking for and allowing passage without injury. This is what daydreams are for. To practice moving with fear anyway.
It is a small thing, isn’t it? Most of the time I forget how small a dream it is. When I remember I feel a kind of ancient sorrow. I don’t know how far it goes back but it feels like my own and another’s. Someone I have never met and yet is in part the reason I am here. When did I learn to think so small? I want to know when I began to believe these things were not so much difficult to find, because perhaps they are in some regard of chance and luck, but difficult to give to me. When did I conceive that acts of tenderness for me would always be rare?
This is my wildest imagination. When it feels small and even when it feels big. That there is a future to walk home to. Most of the time I’m not sad. Most of the time I know that it will exist—can exist. This is not a burden but a dream. This is something to hope for. Sometimes I fall asleep and I can almost feel the place between my shoulders where it all takes place, where it all ends and begins.
I saw a tweet that I have since been unable to find I think I already mentioned it. It said something like, go slowly. Read fewer books, walk places, and take your time getting there. The essence of it, to me, was that we should take better care of what we consume. It isn’t really about striving to do less but understanding and cherishing more. Instead of rushing to read a book for example, enjoy it, mull it over. I’ve come to realize today I have really intense burnout, but even before that moment, I started to take care of what I watch and do.
Here are some things I’ve been mulling over.
Having Coke with You by Frank O’hara: My friend Maria showed me this about a year ago. I revisited it recently and my mind has constantly come back to the particular line: and anyway it’s in the Frick/ which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
Keep Driving by Harry Styles: The lyrics, “Hashbrown, Egg yolk,/ I will always love you.” keep returning to me. People were confused or critical of the seemingly random images but I was drawn to their, at times, mundanity. I return to these lyrics, rewinding just to hear them, because they perfectly capture how often it strikes you over nothing, over breakfast, the depth and reality of your own capacity to love someone. And all you can do is say it.
Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo: “Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.”
Paris, Je T’aime 14e Arrondissement: “I imagined delivering mail every day on a street like this and meeting the people who live here.”
FleaBag (unknown episode and season as I haven’t watched it):
She Walks In Beauty By Lord Byron read by Jude Law: I must confess I mostly think about it because I have a well-documented crush on him.
Jane Austen Daily Tweet June 24th, 2022: I love following daily robots on Twitter and the content they give right when I need it.
I have been finding that often as I move through the month I am feeling so wonderful and as if life is looking up. Only once I peer back at the day-to-day of that a month the struggle of it is so apparent and it had not even occurred to me that I was in a difficult place. I think this is a kind of burnout I’m experiencing. I cannot remember the last time I read for pleasure not because I felt I had to or was required.
When I woke up today to put this all together the idea that I would have to sit and read for hours on end to catch up, as I am a slow reader, was bringing me close to tears. I’m not really sure how to explain.
I would like to emphasize though that my mental health feels good. The first year after graduating college I heard is tough and I would have to agree on that point. So what can you do but rest when your mind is telling you to? And what can you do but admit that there is beauty in the world and sometimes experience and not creating is the only way to create again!
I will be taking the rest of the summer off (two months) when it comes to book club then I will reevaluate. The good news is this leaves more room for creativity. It will be good for us all. I swear!
The gratitude I feel for everyone giving me the creative space to change and move around, to fail, and to take breaks is so large it would jam your inbox. Know though that I felt okay to say this all because you have given me the freedom to and I appreciate that endlessly.
I went home for a week and one thing we do while we’re there is we take these nightly walks. For lots of reasons though, last week, we didn’t do as many. Instead, my parents bought these new chairs and they put them out on the porch. With everyone home, the house can get loud. The news or phones or living itself. As a result one person, looking for quiet or calm, would make their way outside. After a moment someone followed usually. You’d never make it an hour without someone joining you. Until we all were there. There are only three chairs., but we gathered sitting on the hardwood or running in the yard with the dog. The news cycle, the world outside your yard, is one that you can get caught up in. But I find that the current love flows in, will always win. Thanks for hanging outside mom and dad.
That is all for this month.
I’ll see ya around if not here, then somewhere groovy.
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters
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My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go.
My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me
My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, walking home, and much needed breaks
Love always,
Chloé
Loved this newsletter - truly such beautiful words :’)
Brought me to tears. I love this newsletter so much x