Tag: asoss

Me when I can have a girl dinner without a boyfriend screaming in my ear… like, it’s just noodles and butter!

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 5:30PM, 2/5/2025

when the earth was born it appeared purple in the sky, like a blood clot against the skin, a bruise never fully healed. in an instant, an element so volatile it recolored the planet’s iris. an oxygen holocaust. do plants remember? violet fades to verdigris, the seed a photograph, the stamen a scar. lavender grows in my backyard as a gentle reminder of the transgressions i’ve accumulated. act the saint, so you can turn me into the sinner–

---

She used to stay with me ever since I was born, I mean, like, I’ve stayed with her for the past nineteen years…

Science Learning Center, 2:30PM, 2/5/2025

millions will die in this false spring, in the eye of storm and shadow. with the grace of a twig contorting in a wildfire, the passage from person to thing, a frozen pipeline, a burst eardrum. even after a flood, the water reconfigures itself. in a thousand years there will be villages of coral nested in your ribcage and schools of salmon swimming through your skull. in a thousand years man will marvel at the atlantis you have created, a legacy beyond flesh and bone.

---

Go ahead…

No, I could talk about it for hours—

—and I want to hear it!

Michigan Union, 11:00AM, 2/20/2025

the diary of a lover is filled with ellipses–it hurts too much to end even a sentence about you. we are dust mites floating together and the sunbeam is our domain. in this world, a glimpse of the heavens: what guides us also restrains us, but this is a good restraint, this fusion of you and me… consider the weight of the world in one hand and your fingers clasped in the other. if nothing lasts forever, maybe i can be nothing with you…

Where are you from?

Virginia. DC area, Arlington.

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but do you live close to the cemetery?

Uh, yeah I’d say it’s about a ten minute drive…

EECS Building, 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

i met you for the first time as a stranger. we talked about the weather and your father and the new prodigy and the death of our favorite restaurant, like we were seventeen again and you had crawled through my bedroom window and into my arms. as if the world had not stopped spinning, a planet so big and full it hurt to laugh. as if i am not sitting on your gravestone, a quiver in my lip and a tremor in my chest, whispering to the soil to keep you warm in place of me.

---

You’re gonna be the best—oh look! The sun is out!

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 11/12/2024

it was a weed. i wanted to call it pretty but it was a weed, a dandelion beaming with the blush of the sun. quick to bloom, quicker to rot. against all odds it has conquered the impossible, leaves outstretched in heavenly embrace. what wouldn’t a flower give to be appreciated? if i had the chance, i would sit on the cobblestone and watch it grow. if i had the chance, i would name it after you.

---

There are a bunch of spots down there, it’s like Hogwarts!

Nickels Arcade, 2:00PM, 2/2/2025

after Marty Rubin: “lies bewitch us, if we want to be bewitched”–

i have inherited an incurable insomnia from you, in the way your absence keeps me up at night. sleep is a luxury you have stolen–you leave me with nothing more than pity, a memory woven in moonlight and encased in spider’s silk: i closed my eyes and breathed a prayer and you were there, my voice a siren, your mouth a shipwreck. there are ninety-nine names for God and yours is not one of them.

Nice nails!

Thank you, they’re for Valentine’s Day!

[…]

South Quad, 1:00PM, 2/3/2025

skip the middle man, shall we? there is nothing left to say; i have torn the dictionary apart searching for the words to give you. entrust to me your heart and let me cast it in gold, so it may be preserved for the world to admire. one soul to another, without syllable nor stress, for this is the gift of a language repossessed. temple to temple: we are mothers kneeling and mothers weeping, hands clasped and prayers unanswered. how can we be damned when we have each other? your eyes tell me it does not matter; this altar holds enough room for two.

---

I think about you a lot. What does that make us?

Alice Lloyd Hall, 4:00PM, 12/8/2024

i can feel the melody of your thoughts through the heat of your touch–an excellent conductor, in more ways than one–your pulse rippling but not breaking the surface, a swordfish streamlined against the ocean. everything we have to say has already been written above, a cosmic braille blotted by the sun. you wear the stars as a cape; i trace the freckles on your back, brush tears away from your cheek. don’t you see? a night sky splashed across your skin. a kiss made salty by sweaty lips, fingertips charting the seas you once commanded. you have been graced with ethereal beauty. in the nowhere there is only the rush, the crash, the silence.

---

I’ve got no one to cuddle with, [so] I’m gonna buy a body pillow…

Stockwell Hall, 12:00PM, 1/9/2025

a seed of resolve: i am going to love you to the moon and back. you protest weakly, the way a tired child insists on staying awake. do not set your words on me, for i know your tongue too well. i will wrap my arms around you and never let go, until the daylight bleeds into darkness and you fall asleep, the thump in your chest in line with the echo in my eardrum. it will take more than death to separate us. atrophy or infinity, whichever comes first.

She used the word assure when she meant ensure. which is not a typo, it’s a language problem, which is a big deal! People type fast, whatever, it’s okay, but somebody wants to be a writer and they don’t understand the difference between assure and ensure?

Traverwood Library, 5:30PM, 1/14/2025

there are windows of opportunity and there are doors of regret, sometimes both, but never neither. you have blown into my life like a wayward leaf. where did you come from? darling, i was born in a hurricane. the windows are boarded but the door still swings off its hinges. you shake your head–whether in denial, or disbelief, or innocence, as if it would make a difference. Isabel Allende was right: two words is all it takes to change a person’s life. everyone could see the eyes of the puma soften as she steps towards him and takes his hand~

---

Back when I was in Livonia… the school district said kids can bring their phones to school and I remember being like “we’ve lost the war!”

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

who gets to control the narrative? the caution tape flutters, a moth snared in a spiderweb. i am an ambulance chaser in every sense of the word. you tell me it is immoral, and i remind you that morality is a price to pay for your wellbeing. are we only in love because we love emergencies? sometimes we make bad decisions and they blossom into the undeserved fruits of our labor. other times they burrow into the belly, out of sight and out of mind. you are delicate in this life, just as i am delicate without you–mother nature plays such cruel tricks on her children! my stomach rumbles in agreement: there are no dormant volcanoes, only overdue ones.

---

…I didn’t even get my freaking cheese grits this morning!

Duderstadt Connector, 5:00PM, 2/4/2025

annoyance is worse than tragedy because it fools you into believing that your emotions are unjustified. we allow grief to permeate the barrier, unregulated, like a broken floodgate. this luxury does not extend to inconvenience without the eye of guilt, an ever-present watchman. the caterpillar and the butterfly, two sides of the same coin–what is a tragedy but an annoyance left unchecked? it is human nature to rot from the inside. even the phoenix dies from an ironclad heart: thinking of you turned me into ashes.

That’s like people who put their socks over their pants. Ugh.

That’s horrendous!

Intramural Building, 3:30PM, 1/13/2025

the voice you are reading this with is not mine or yours, but a narrator present to your thoughts. first-person omniscience? an enzyme, breaking and rebuilding, a tornado of yarn tangling the threads separating memory from fiction. they are both the same, in a way; there is no way to prove the past, just as there is no way to prove your presence. your finger slips against the needle and you curse softly, a soap bubble of a word, floating out of your mouth and into the air.

---

Apparently her nickname at church was church slut. Yeah. I guess we’re just leaving it out there.

Palmer Commons, 5:00PM, 12/2/2024

ecstasy is paired with dread like a fine wine to a steak: one enhances the flavor of the other. you are frying shallots and mincing the skins, turning them into an autumn leafpile on the cutting board. i don’t ask what you plan to do with it–with what? the skins, the oil, the knife? a square of butter falls into the pan and begins to bubble in protest, a witch burned at the stake for predicting the future. a final chemical farewell–just like the scent of grass, a scream without sound–as you turn around and pour the scraps down the sink. my stomach drops with the oil, with a hiss. paired with dread, indeed.

---

What the [-] is wrong with you? You’re showing all of Ann Arbor my ass! Pull my draws up!

Blake Transit Center, 4:30PM, 1/27/2025

another theory: for each idea we nurture, ten more sink their roots in the soft flesh of the brain. antheia’s snakes, long and green and suffocating everything in sight. that’s not right. you’re confusing jack and the beanstalk with king midas. and wasn’t it medusa with the snakes? i wave you off. the vines tighten further. delirium is a delicious taste because it convinces you that nothing is impossible. everything, and everything still–don’t you see? the beginning is the end of the beginning. the stardust twinkles in your eyes, just to prove a point.

I’ve decided that if I’m not going to succeed socially, I’m going to succeed professionally. I gotta make use of something… if I can’t be in a sorority, imma be in a business frat.

Alice Lloyd Hall, 9:30PM, 1/21/2025

relegate your goals to the backseat. how low is the bar, anyway? along the margins, the minimum viable product that you need to sustain yourself. don’t you know? you are living in a dream and all dreams must end. i sit and watch the advertisements fly by on the wall of the station, a square meter of air compressed into a single breath. an inhalation of eternities, a sunbeam of love: i am speechless at your gallantry. you press your mouth to mine and say that you have found the words for both of us.

---

His technical skills were crazy because he would put in twenty hours a day when he couldn’t sleep!

DOW Building, 11:30AM, 1/16/2025

the steps to greatness and the steps to madness are often interchangeable. like a genetic sequence, one misplaced brick can rebuild generations and shatter entire worlds. on this climb, a fall from at the beginning and a fall at the end are of equal heartbreak. it is a fall in the middle, when you have gotten comfortable with the ascent and are just beginning to hope, that hurts the most. take fortune away from a poor man, he will think nothing of it. take fortune away from a rich man, he will think he deserves it. but take fortune away from the man who treads water and watch him sink like a stone.

---

That’s all you need: nice pizza and windows and a bed.

Markley Hall, 10:00AM, 1/17/2025

there are two ways to approach life: directly, or not at all. change your perspective, accelerate your reference state–as if your room were a prison and not a shelter! a deluge of thoughts, liquid gold, envelops your brain in a cast. the migraine spills over, sharper than lightning, splitting teeth and tongue. your nails leave indents in my wrists like a paragraph. essays have been burned and blood has been spilled over less.