I have been talking to a girl who actually tries to love me back—an experience entirely foreign to my life. The truth is, she is far too good for me, and I mean that sincerely. She was accepted into Brown University, she organizes school events, and she is lovely, gorgeous, and somehow intends to care for me. I wonder if I am being overly optimistic, or perhaps she is merely being kind; yet, the reality is that I have begun to care deeply. I know I can be self-destructive, occasionally obsessive, and prone to overthinking. I once encountered a phrase that said, “Just don’t overthink, jazz it up”. It left me feeling somewhat hopeless because my life had become an unfinished work—a routine that repeats daily, even through the darkest hours. I need that spark again: the improvisation of life, much like jazz. High tones, frantic melodies, moments that are trembling and slow, then fast, then chaotic—but in the end, jazz leads me to peace. Art leads me to peace. My friends are the kind of people who, if seen on the street, might be judged as irresponsible or dangerous teenagers; and in truth, they are a bit wild. Yet even they feel this emptiness. Though we may not be on the same page, the words that form us are composed of the same letters: we all feel scared, empty, or useless at times. We carry our traumas, our triumphs, and our descents within minds that are far too complex. That is why I write. Returning to this girl: most of my peers prefer fleeting relationships—brief connections that are more physical than profound. But I could never love that way. I don’t say this to cast myself as "different," but because I genuinely cannot love without actually loving. When I care for someone, I give everything, though I try to keep it controlled; I am not a rampage of emotions. I often struggle to express myself, yet there are people who shift my perspective and help me articulate everything my hollow heart holds. She could be a path toward love—a point on the line I follow toward the future.

Dad, I think I’m finally sober. I am sensitive: I feel everything, I want to heal everyone. A man caught between two words: I forgive you, or I hate you. The alcohol boiled my blood, it set me on fire from within, turned my chest red. I wanted to purge those last phrases you said: “Son, you disappoint me.” It disappointed me to hear them. I murdered someone three nights ago: I buried my ego amidst broken glass. Everything blurs and then I breathe, I inhale, and as I return to my body, I am sober once again. Where is that faith you wanted me to have? I never believed much in anything, not even myself. I’d wake up at dawn, take the bus exhaling dark smoke, seeking help. I’d go far for work, come home, and drink. I am close to the transformation; it only cost me being close to death. Three months ago, I drove and crashed, numb to the impact because of the alcohol. Today, Dad, I’m calling you because I’m sober. I don’t know what I was looking for: your company, your forgiveness, or a goodbye. I know you try, I try too, but it’s hard for me to show what I feel. We’ve both made mistakes. It’s time to wake up, back to a past of pancakes and bacon in the kitchen, where there is only alcohol now. Dad, I’d like to be someone else. Today I walked for twenty minutes to slow my heart down, to feel nature manufacturing life inside of me. I ended up on a bench in a downtown park. A homeless man sat beside me and spoke. A bottle in one hand, a bag in the other that he called home. They judge him for being an addict, not knowing that addiction is sometimes the only thing capable of making you feel alive while pulsing alone in your room. We should not be judged by our addictions; we are so much more than that. We all have addictions. We all can break. Dad, I hate you for no precise reason. I wish I understood what happens to me when you are near, even when you're absent. You watched me suffer and did nothing; you left, and I had to care for everyone. I think I am sober of thoughts now,

I have been counting the days, since that cold January morning, waiting for December to finally arrive, so I can finally float alone in the green pasture, riding on the edge of the sunset and feeling something beyond this vast solitude that, through tears, forms who I am. That is why I write to you, so you may know that you deserve more than a rustic scent at dusk, more than eucalyptus and roses, more than an "I love you" as empty as your interior. You deserve a holiday, a rest before the end of the world. Dear self, I write to you from that part so dark— so dark that even in the sunlight, you cannot see me. The void. You call me by an untameable surname. You paint me with goat horns, frog legs, and the devil’s moan, snake eyes, and ruthless fangs. My foul breath fractures your lips into pieces so broken that your words end up crumbling before they leave your mouth, before they die on your tongue. Above all things, you continue to call me a villain. I am pure solitude, the only thing that remains at the end of it all. The abstract figures that form your face, that which makes the light within you flicker, a bubbling of sensations, like a freshly opened champagne, a pounding of emotions, like a thief pushing at the door. The sound wave that calls your name in the mornings, the shadow that follows you in the puddles of your pillow, the curtain that closes when you hide from life— I am the air that cuts your cheeks. The tasteless soup in the fridge, the dirty death, the rot, the austere guitar, the final case, I am your lethal sentence. You seek out people as a pillar of peace, hoping to hold onto them should you lose your way, hoping they bring you the box of memories if you happen to forget yourself; you swear they will play you a melody at midnight if you cannot sleep. But they leave you so alone, that only I remain. And finally, you listen to me. They ignore you as you pass, they claim to love everything about you, but why do they lie their whole lives if lies only consume their fire?

I felt no warmth while holding your hands. They used to be soft, light, and hot. Now they were only full of holes and the cold tinsel that you named tears. You lacked happiness and consoled yourself in restlessness, right above me. You asked me to be close. I was. Even though I was lost, in this beehive that is my mind, without thoughts and decisions are covered in emotions. Without holding focus on anything or anyone. You asked me to hold your hand at the end of the night just to be able to feel yourself whole, to feel something. And amidst all this anhedonia, we saved each other. Paper submarines, I thought; This salvation is like a paper submarine. At some point, it will break, and we will drown, but the reality is that I would be alone, fallen. Your breasts held by your bra, your linen shirt traveled across your skin, brushing every hair and taking care of you. And I was your pillar of peace. Is there anyone for me? I worried about you so much that I didn't worry if I worried you. I trusted myself so little that trusting you a little would be common. You were the cycle passing through my mind, reviving, murdering everything of me. I told myself, I must not have you, I can't, I will hurt you; I know you won't hurt me. You weren't interested enough to make me suffer. And I wasn't interested enough to listen to myself and flee. What am I to you? What are we? I asked myself every night before sleep. You fell to the floor, and you still had your bra holding your breasts, your striped shirt covering your body, many burning gazes to take care of you and give you comfort. My heart made for you was there. But the reality is that you hadn't needed me for a while, pickled like a sad, forgotten gherkin in the fridge. You stole my flavor, my heat, and now that you have plenty, only snow surrounds me—what your photographs are— Your cold face and my heart are fighting to beat. But I was falling, and I had nothing to hold onto, my socks torn, my ankles swollen, laughter in between. The innate chaos fisherman.

She untied the knots of the night, broke her sentence alongside the stars, and let the moon rise by day, so the sun could see her once more. She no longer had to share her lonely feelings only with letters, nor sing them through her sobs, hoping some owl would witness her. Her old skin fell away, leaving her exposed to an upside-down world a world dead at heart, living only for its story. She was the light through cathedral glass, a rare date in a leap year. She was the flash on the mountain peak where your ego cannot breathe. Pure clarity. Her dream turned reality. She was reborn like a flower after the snow, a dark force charging into life. She was a rebel in this hollow world, claiming everything as hers, and herself for everyone. What was worse: expecting something from someone, or having them expect something from you? She didn't ask; she knew that if you even had to doubt, you would never get close enough to touch her heart. She was the desire in the sheets, the sweat of passion, the brushstrokes meeting on a canvas. But what happens when the art is worth more than the frame and nobody notices? It reminds me of your body, sculpted in shadows. She was everything and nothing, shadow and light, fire and water, logic and form. And somehow, she was mine; she slept beneath my tongue. She felt like pure pleasure, and at last, I was something more than a body aging through time. Slowly. Slowly. I felt it all, and I only took one pill. I didn’t remember her, but she was… Rebirth. I could hear the alarm in the distance, fading away with the effect.