aSoSS 47 | Timeline

We saw each other three weeks ago…

No we didn’t! I don’t remember this!

It was at the bus stop. Remember I went to Canada three weeks ago? We were making fun of Canada.

Duderstadt Library, 4:30PM, 2/4/2025

to think that we can live a thousand lives in the blink of an eye–one for each word, each feeling, a pixel of sunlight in the crook of your smile, cutting through the fog like a lotus in the mud. you are older now and the photo has faded from your memory–does this mean it even existed at all? as Forster put it: the king died, and the queen died of grief. just like a story worth telling is defined by the plot, a life worth living is defined by the details.


They didn’t have cell phones in ’96, at least the kids I worked with… life has changed in a relatively short period of time.

Jerusalem Garden, 12:30PM, 2/1/2025

we have run inside to escape, a one-way street with no reprieve. the playpen has been replaced by a touchscreen, a bright light projected from a black hole. do you think the grass misses the footsteps? such is the cycle of attention, the rhythm of the rivers and the stars. the same way the brook bends against the underbrush: restless, ceaseless, the water strumming the chords of river rock. the guilt settles and hardens like a gumdrop–the feeling has passed, but the dust has already settled.


Another text in the group chat! This man hasn’t texted us for two years and now he’s texted us twice! He misses us!

Science Learning Center, 5:00PM, 2/19/2025

an analogy: if the chef brings out a dessert and you gulp it down in one bite, you experience the short-term pleasure of the meal without regret. you pay the bill and take your leave; you live in the moment; you forget. but instead if you take incremental bites, savoring the flavor, your pleasure is extended–but so is your awareness of the ending, the certainty that at any moment you will reach for the fork and find an empty plate. which, then, is the greater heartbreak: to be ignorant, or appreciative, of the timeline? to lose without knowing, or to count each moment as it slips away?

–your breath shudders, for you know this is the voice of a mute and the word of a liar. into my ear you whisper goodbye in your language–i ask you what it means and you say i love you

~Sappy Daze~ Day 19

An Unfortunate Cookie

The only fortunes my family is okay with wasting are the fortune cookies we 
receive after we pay the bill at a Chinese restaurant. I crush them as much 
as I can until the plastic bag it’s in pops. I take out the slip of paper 
with the red ink that stamps empty promises accompanied by lucky numbers 
that were never lucky enough to win me the lottery. Then I toss the cookie 
into the decorative koi pond. I have more fun feeding them than feeding myself. 

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: Dichotomous Nothing

dichotomous nothing

the air bleeds 

honey cough syrup

stirred by a Southern wind

winding ribbons around the soul

symphonies around suffering

boxed up in pairs

sweet like pears

the taste of bitters on my tongue

lick the surface of starving minds 

tired bones buried 

deep

in the earth 

dormant dead and dusted 

dreaming of something better

than sallow skin 

bone marrow chipping in

to make days of dichotomous nothing

will there ever be something