last year and the year before that and the year before that

sometimes when i lie on my back on my bedroom floor and listen to music with my eyes closed, i forget how old i am, i could be any age i've already been. because these are the things i do, these are the things we do, things that people do. we feel sadness and we feel longing and we stare up at the ceiling for hours. we play the same songs on repeat and memorize all the words and apply them to ourselves and sing them out loud in the dark. i eat the same food and watch the same movies this time of year, to feel less lonely and excuse my annual urge for hibernation as something to do with tradition. i stay in my room, i stay in my bed, and it's all i want to do until i start wondering what you're doing, how you're doing, what we'd be doing if we were together right now, or down the street from each other still. and then i lie to myself and say that winter's just like that, autumn's just like that, breeding time for nostalgia; brooding time. but really, that's just all the time, every season. we all know.

and every winter, every autumn, i romanticize the cold season of last year, or the year before, years where i felt just the same as i do now except it looks so much better in retrospect. knowing you lived through it, maybe. you pause in the present to look back, look at all the details, up close and with appreciation. the colors of the walls and the songs on the radio and the way the living room was arranged that year. and in all the time it takes you, you can finally see all the beauty, the every day beauty, what was real, what was pictureque, what was perfect, what you missed.