Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: The multiverse scene, when Michelle Yeoh is experiencing all the universes at once, film frames moving faster than one can process.
That’s what spring feels like.
I’m outside on my deck, and oh, how I’ve longed for this. I’m sick, and I can’t breathe, and all I want to do is cry.
Every moment is so beautiful, every second is its own song, and the composition of life is crumbling in my hands.
I’m so happy.
In my heart is a roadmap to my friends’ addresses, and in the slight sway of the trees lies the truth.
My heart hurts, and there’s cake batter ice cream in my stomach.
The birds are screaming at each other, and I’m texting Evelyn ramblings about the noose of yearning. Maybe they’re communicating similar sentiments; it’s not their fault they can’t text.
I want to do something drastic, I want to throw up my heart in shards out of my stomach.
The actual truth, painful and raw and grateful, is that I’m still in my youth, kind of.
Everything is tainted with the knowledge that it’s not lasting, I’m not yet in the long haul, I’m simply trying not to bide time, trying to live through it.
I feel older when I watch the kids run around Frosty Boy, but I feel younger when I pull into the garage of a house that I don’t own.
Not youthful, but not free.
I went to prom last week. How sprightly, how spring.
I only realized I was still in my youth when I realized how life is never going to be exactly as it is now.
I am running out of high school springs.
On a random Monday morning, I go to my first hour, take my seat by the window, and notice the trees have bloomed green after weeks of being greeted by their barren branches.
I’m fine with growing up, for the most part. I just can’t get over the fact that, after college, the word “routine” loses its meaning and becomes a synonym for forever. That’s how I know I’m still in the early stage of life: there is nothing permanent about my life right now. Nothing that will stay with me when I shed this adolescence for adulthood.
I think I will settle down and have a beautiful life, but I never want to be too settled. That’s what scares me the most.
It’s scaring me now because I’m running out of youthful springs.
Only a handful of times more will I walk out of school to find a surprise warm day, caught off guard, roll up the sleeves of my sweater, and blast my spring playlist while driving down Cascade Road.
I only have one more spring where this is my home.
One more Michigan spring, until the wind takes me away. Maybe I’ll return, but I know I won’t be the same as I am now.
Every aspect of spring is screaming in my ear. Spring is the music, the weather, the nostalgia, the multiverse. Everything and everywhere I could be right now, all the green grass I could lie on and all the paths, beaten down and untaken alike, calling my name.
My eyes are tired, the clouds have that golden edge they get a little before sunset, and I’ve been compiling my life into this for probably half an hour at this point.
I used to try to write poetically, but I think—I hope—honesty might be more poetic.
To me, it’s poetic that I can write gibberish about the intricacies of my third high school spring, and someone will understand.
Someone will understand.
