mckenzington

I love you. I always say it and I always will. Until the words look funny written down and they feel funny coming out of my mouth. But only in the way that a word becomes worn out when you say it too many times in a row and not in the way that it becomes any less true. My mouth will get used to forming the letters one by one and I'll be able to type them with my eyes closed. But I won't get used to the feeling I get when I say it because when I say it, it's like striking a match every time because every time I remember the first time I said it. The match heats up my body and dies slowly, over and over again. I never run out of matches and they always strike on the first try.

I've always been fascinated with time. I'm an extremely nostalgic person and the type that's highly affected by the changing of seasons. I always jokingly have my boyfriend explain to me how time works, because one drunken night he and a friend tried to explain black holes and the spacetime continuum to me with a plastic sandwich bag and a pencil. But what's most interesting to me is how time heals. I used to harbour a lot of shame and anger and sadness for an experience I had earlier this year, so much so that even hearing the person's name made me sick to my stomach. I was young and inexperienced and desperate to be loved so I threw myself into something that was bound to fail. I saw all of the signs but I let it crumble around me anyway. For a long time after it happened, I couldn't see or hear anything associated with that person without feeling sick and upset. So I did everything in my power to avoid just that. But I recently came across screenshots

when your arms first collided with me i felt as if i had known you for years, and technically i had, but not in that way. you laughed into my ear and i held fast to your hands because i was drunk and it was late and i couldn't lose this feeling. jello shots were held in the air and as you reached for one i still held onto your hands. i was waiting for the next necessary step, wanting to let the messy drunk hook up run its course, and it didn't. although i pulled your sweater off and tossed it to you in one hasty and indifferent gesture, the feeling of the fabric lingered on me even as i ended the night at home. when we drank limeade and gin on your balcony i leaned back in my chair and you asked me how my summer has been. as i replied i could see the way you listened to me, how your eyes sparkled and you smiled at me for no reason. i knew then that nothing had died a month ago, and my mistake was written in the way you looked at me. when i spent the morning at your house an

give me beautiful words and i will give you mine and then nothing will be left for anyone else then our words will have conquered  like rome conquered greece with weapons but do not forget that greece conquered rome with love. 

As the ocean reaches out to me the sand escapes and flows over my toes  and I dig them deeper, the coarseness soothes. And I realize there is something so simple  about the amniotic water lapping in and out of the mouths of clams. The ocean reaches further, she wraps around the bare skin of my feet and I curl my toes but the saltwater is cold and the tide is strong. I was not born here, but I see a womb in the cluster of mussels on the side of a dilapidated fishing boat. I was not born here, but here I am. 

Fingertips make valleys in undiscovered skin and on yours my hands  have hardly made ravines. But I know that your freckles don't spill over your skin like flecks of cosmic dust, they are carefully placed so that I remember them. I know your smile, the way it looks  and how it feels pressed against mine in the pause before a kiss, vivid and human.  I didn't know the feeling of the floor then  the way that I do now, a landscape of tangled legs and feather duvets and the unforgiving flatness  of the varnished oak. One day my fingertips will leave valleys my kisses will taste like saltwater and when leaving doesn't kill me  then I'll understand  that nothing is terminal, not even love.  Over here the ocean stretches forever and now I think, the hardwood floor  would be such a nice place to lay my head. 

You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Nothing has felt more sobering this summer than that. My stepmom recently said to me that the past nine years have gone by too fast. And that hit me like a freight train - what's truly terrifying is that, if a chunk of time as long as nine whole years could feel too short, then this summer is a mere blink of the eye. It's the time it takes for a text to send. It's the time it takes for all the lights in the city to go out at once. It's such a simple thing to realize that you're surprised when you realize it because you thought it had been there, in your brain, all along but it's really something you need to feel before you know it. Matter over mind. I told myself over and over that I know what I have, that I'm having it right now, and eating it too. Like someone smiling into a mirror after brushing their teeth, not an emotion, just checking. Just a reminder. All 32 bits of bone still in place, li

I note in the distance the creaky door of the ramshackle house crammed between chipped paint edges. A widow with a painter’s smock stands in the frame. Fraying corners and technicolour oranges patterned on her gravel dusted sandals, summer sun seeping into veins filling a cavity once forgotten and leaving behind a spillage of freckles. The smattering of dried paint bits on the wooden paintbrush is vaguely aquamarine – listless and tender, a colour come undone. Inside she is vermilion like the fire that licked Joan’s feet or the colour of her beating heart under cropped hair and men’s clothes as she led the French to sunrise. Purple pansies plucked carelessly from the garden nestle in her hair, they are in dire need of watering but horticultural trivialities never were a passion of hers. Scraping and painting over, again and again, emptying and filling falling and catching she makes the process vivid. The summer sun stretches out, not scorching but

It's almost hilarious listening to people argue over rules of the game. Sometimes the tension above tiny checker pieces or flimsy cards can't even be cut with a knife - it requires a power saw. Everyone has their own way of playing backgammon or euker, and none of these ways seem to be the right one. To me, games are something done in passing. Games are played so that you can talk to your friends and family, or so you can drink cider and eat cheese and crackers. They are rarely played for the sake of playing. That's why they're called pastimes. I think we're all just passing time, and I don't think there's a right way to do it. I can never tell whether life is unfair or simply kicking our asses. I think about how minds change. Some say that actions are not a product of reactivity, but of fault. It seems entirely unfair for someone to have a conversation, see a film, or read a book, and in that moment decide that their view of someone has changed. Suddenly