This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Ishaan Barrett
It occurred to me while tending to the clumps in my mascara with a safety pin that they don’t tell you how much of life is doing shit like this and scooping gunk out from beneath your nails using your other nails. I'm glad no one bumped into me because then all that would occur to me is blinding pain. Blinding pain... A loved one told me the way I look at the world is fascinating and beautiful. They hesitated because it is also scary and, they murmured, it seems very painful.
Do not you dare expect reciprocity. Call it dead smart emotional genius, call it a wall. I call it balance, creating it instead of trying to find it. And you know what I am not a fucking sucker. Except that I am such a sucker when I throw around I will always love you so often. It’s the only thing I trust myself to say with a steady voice. It’s the only feeling that is honest with me. I do not sleep soundly at night but if I did it would be because of how I’m a force at foosball all of a sudden. I want to play against my first kiss for fun and my second kiss for damage.
What if I write because I lie so much? What an embarrassing question but if you have to ask it’s probably true. Because you don’t even know when you’re being yourself anymore. No, I’m just sick of this prolonged vigil. For me and something a lot of people are scared to believe in. Some do, and it’s the New Year alleycat’s meow. It’s having to question whether that noise was me or an animal. It’s following your dog to his chess tournament on a Thursday past midnight and watching him bet all his bones away but still have a really nice time.
Actually I write to die softer. More than once, more than one person in a day told me I had just talked for ten minutes straight without realizing, which makes me feel kind of bad. For not being more private and crying for weeks past when it’s cathartic. My whole ass is on display at the party, but I’m hardly there to notice. Maybe if I could hear the words I’d be singing instead of making little beats with the click of my mary janes on hardwood that I do not need to hear to hear because it’s in my whole body. Celestial comedown is a bitch, a handsome prophet said. It’s blue but it’s finally something. Marching to my doom I can see that when the air is wide but unmoving it sometimes just wants to be cut with words.
Haven Capone (she/they) is a sophomore at Barnard tentatively studying creative writing and Italian. She plays Mellophone in the campus ensemble Columbia Pops and loves bears. She could never pick a favorite genre to write and will forever move between them.