u/ObservableUniverses

Heeeeyy Yooouu,

I'm trying so hard not to let your eyes pierce me, your smile melt me, or your voice find another way to wound me.

Still, I sit among these fields, asking questions I already know you'll never answer.

Would you accept a pound of flesh to settle the debt?

The debt I owe for the loan I took out against your heart, a loan I can never repay. Would I be worthy of you then?

Would a pound of flesh prove my devotion to something that no longer exists?

Would it ever be enough?

I've imagined carving pieces from myself, offering them as payment, as though sacrifice could balance a ledger love was never meant to keep. Would you accept such a gift?

It was the seven ounces inside my chest that I wanted to give you.

The three-pound gray mass behind my eyes keeps insisting I let your memory rest. It tells me to stop waiting on the riverbank for a message in a bottle, to stop expecting a letter that will never return, to stop mistaking silence for possibility.

But memory has never listened to reason.

It keeps your voice alive in places where no echo should remain.

So I find another field. Another evening. Another list of questions that can not collect what they're owed.

Perhaps that is the debt, not what I owe you, but what your memory continues to demand from me.

It's time to hang up the keys.

~ The Farmer

Heeeeyy Yoouu,

My mind won't stop with you, but the solution is releasing you. I don't need permission. It's my right. To feel complete again is my release.

Releasing energy into the wind is like letting sand slip through an open hand. You can spend your life trying to hold on to every grain, only to realize that what was meant to leave always finds a way. Some would call that catharsis. I think of it as restoring balance. Allowing the good to remain while making peace with what no longer serves you.

The word release has always carried different meanings. In baseball, a pitcher releases the ball and watches it tumble toward its destination. Whether it's met with a swing, a miss, or left untouched is no longer theirs to decide. Once it leaves the hand, the outcome belongs to something beyond them.

Perhaps our own lives work much the same way.

Releasing our thoughts, our presence, our complexity, and even the parts of ourselves we've hidden away is rarely comfortable. It asks something of us. It brings us to a reckoning, and every reckoning carries a little chaos. Yet it is often through that chaos that clarity quietly arrives.

Release is not the absence of struggle; it is what waits on the other side of accepting it.

It should never resemble shame.

Shame clings and asks to be carried. Release asks only to be trusted. It lightens what has grown too heavy and reminds us that letting go is not the same as giving up.

Whatever energy we release into the world has a way of returning, altered perhaps, but familiar nonetheless. So release with intention. Let go of the uncomfortable moments that have outlived their purpose.

Hold close the memories that deserve gratitude, and allow yourself to dream without asking permission from your past.

Go forth with release. Not because the journey becomes easier, but because you become lighter as you continue it.

~The Wiser

Well,

I've been looking at my hands a lot lately because they hurt.

I've used them like tools and implements that have carried me through my days. They're tired, sore, and calloused.

Steady. Worn. Strong.

The kind of strength that unsettles some people.

These hands have helped build me. They've built the life I wanted and the future I still hope for.

They build, repair, and caress.

They cook, clean, and soak.

They plant, mend, and make.

These hands grew tired of holding on to something so beautiful that my fingers eventually spread.

They longed to hold yours. To comfort you. To be the hands you reached for when the world became too heavy.

Instead, your heart hardened against them. It decided these were never the hands it wanted.

Yet these hands were never made to harm.

They're gentle.

When they aren't gentle, they're tools. They work until the skin splits until the muscles ache until there's nothing left to give. I've pushed them beyond their limits more times than I can count.

Still, they carried the weight of hoping your heart might one day rest inside them.

When I look at my hands, I cry.

Not because they're rough, but because they've spent so little of their life at rest. They never had much time to write love poems, sonnets, or stories. They've been too busy building, fixing, feeding, carrying.

They're as tired as I am.

So I'll keep using them the way I always have, repairing what's broken, sautéing meals, baking bread, tending to growing things.

Because these hands are monuments to who I've become.

They may be rough, but they're strong.

And with that strength, I opened them one last time.

I let the last of your memory drift into the wind like sawdust slipping through my fingers.

These hands are building something magical now.

They're helping rebuild me.

They're gripping my future instead of my past.

They're still gentle.

These are my hands.

~ The Builder

Heeeeyy Yooouu,

I had the most epic dream last night. I just woke up with blurry eyes to write this before it slipped away.

It was one of those dreams that somehow made perfect sense while I was in it, a bizarre mix of Monty Python and a rom-com.

Do you remember me walking up to you on that forklift and asking,

"What's up, Buttercup? You got a license for that thing?"

Your eyes lit up like the Fourth of July.

According to my actual receipts, that was the eighth time we'd talked about something that wasn't your job.

About you.

We flirted. We laughed.

You answered with this grin that reminded me of a little kid who'd just been handed the best surprise of their life.

That's exactly where the dream picked up.

Same store. Same forklift. Same me. Same you.

Only this time, you answered.

"Yup. I got a license for love, Mister. Wanna ride?"

I responded with a loud country. "Oooh, Heellll Yeeeaah."

Apparently, even my dreams have dreams.

You drove off toward the back of the store and came back carrying a heart-shaped couch balanced perfectly on the forks.

"Hop on," you said. "We're taking this to a sunset."

"A sunset?" I asked.

"Nope, Mister. Where this love is going, there isn't just one sunset. There are thousands of them, and I'm planning on watching every single one with you."

Again, my dreams have dreams...

I launched myself onto that couch like some overcaffeinated cartoon character, complete with imaginary sound effects.

Then I leaned in to kiss you...

...and slammed my face straight into the forklift's hydraulic pistons.

THONK

A truly magnificent, dignity-destroying THONK.

That's when I woke up.

I grabbed my notepad before the dream could evaporate and started writing.

It's strange how the subconscious refuses to negotiate.

Some part of me still wants that impossible version of us. The version where you answered. The version where the joke became a love story instead of just a lingering nightmare.

A tale told in the forest

God, I'd like that part of me to hurt a little less.

I'd like the things other people left behind in me to finally leave.

Because I wanted that dream.

I wanted you.

I wanted to learn you.

I wanted a future.

I wanted to be happy for once.

You're still cuter than shit, which is such a weird expression when you actually think about it.

Around three in the morning I ended up sitting on my porch laughing at myself.

Why can't even my subconscious let you go?

Maybe because we never got past flirting.

Maybe because I always thought we almost did. Until, it didn't.

Maybe because I swear I saw it in your eyes.

I'd love to end this with, "See ya around," but the odds of that seem pretty slim these days.

Funny how a small town can suddenly feels the size of a metropolis.

Somewhere out there, I'm still trying to kiss you without headbutting a forklift.

Oh well. I tried. I tried getting past you too.

C'est la vie.

~ The Unintentional Ghost

Edit: I saw your sibling in town. It's hard to miss when your family has a look. Maybe seeing her made my brain go into overload. And she hovered around me, as if mocking me that we never had a chance.

Hello, Earth.

You humans are remarkably complex creatures.

Your own scientists know more about the Moon than they know about the organ that allows them to ask questions in the first place. Curious, isn't it?

It is that grey, mushy thing you carry inside your skull that makes your decisions, shapes who you are, who you become, and ultimately, who you die as. An extraordinary organ.

It keeps a close alliance with the pounding muscle in your chest, the one that quietly keeps your species alive. Between these two things, you become you.

Not your gender.

Not your ideology.

Not your status.

Not even your society.

You.

Yet your cultures seem increasingly ruled by dopamine and acknowledgment. Who liked whose picture. Who reacted to whose opinion. Who gathered the loudest applause from strangers they'll never meet.

A few of you seem to notice.

Technology was built to connect you. Instead, it often teaches you to avoid one another. As you read this, how many millions of faces are illuminated by small glowing rectangles instead of sunlight?

Your remarkable brain and your faithful heart are capable of astonishing things. They can deceive you, inspire you, distract you, betray you, create impossible beauty, or leave you hopelessly in love.

Treat them carefully.

Go outside.

Touch the grass.

Speak to one another the way your ancestors did. Take a candy bar to the girl you admire and ask her to prom. It may seem wonderfully cheesy to you now, but somehow, it worked before algorithms began introducing you to each other.

Stop hiding inside rooms full of unanswered questions.

Walk among your planet.

Walk with trepidation.

Walk with anticipation.

Walk with exuberance.

Be seen.

Be heard.

Give that remarkable grey organ something worth remembering.

Allow that beating heart something worth feeling.

Most of all, people of that great blue sphere;

Go be yourselves.

Without explanation.

Without regret.

Without remorse.

Your skin sacks are beautiful in every form you choose to make them.

We are especially fond of the colored hair.

This message was never transmitted.

Perhaps you were always meant to discover it yourselves.

~Thoughts crossing the void

Heeeeyy Yooouu,

Did you know the number twenty-eight puts a sour taste in my mouth, much like copper.

Today, the twenty-eighth of this month, three years ago, I walked away from you. The last time I would see you there, before fate decided to say hello.

I watched you bounce up the aisle to the counter all country cute. Yeah, I noticed. I tried not to. I knew it would never be.

Then I heard “Heeeyy Yoouu" and my heart sank.

I tried to be coy and reserved, while something in me was quietly erupting.

I wasn’t looking, and there you were.

How does something so striking fit into such an ordinary moment?

You made an impression I didn’t know how to carry.

But it was never going to be.

Why did I even think, for a nanosecond, that you’d entertain my conversations? My waves? Those moments when I’d glance over and catch you doing the same?

Yeah… there was something there I can’t quite name.

I walked away as I always did. Transaction complete.

I’m sorry I left you without answers. That I left you to find them elsewhere later. That much I own, and I understand your stance.

We never had a chance outside of that place. No time to talk at length. To discover. To understand.

Maybe that’s what lingers most.

Not what happened.

What never got the chance to.

I reached for something that wasn’t there and learned the shape of that absence.

There’s a lesson in meeting you, one I’ll probably carry longer than I should.

I hate the number twenty-eight.

~ The Unintentional Apologetic Ghost