Ph. Елена Татульян

Handle with care

Couple vu d’en haut - A. et L.

© Marie Ployart - Instagram / website

there was no perfect path. you did not get punished. your life did not unravel when you made a left turn. the memory will always be there. you can visit whenever you want. there is no alternate timeline where you made a better choice and got a happier ending. you were a little girl chasing the ice cream truck, playing hopscotch, swinging and aiming for the never ending blue. yes, the grief was waiting up ahead. but so was the miracle of saturdays in a car headed wherever you wanted to go. enough sky to wrap around every wound. friends who, despite your perennial bouts of silence, kept an ear close at all times.

fountain in bologna, italy

“I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”

— Anais Nin - from a diary entry dated March 25, 1933 featured in The Diary of Anais Nin: Volume 1.1931-1934:

George Seferis, tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from The Collected Poems 1924-1955; “In the Kyrenia District”

[Text ID: “I prefer it by moonlight.”]

The older I get, the more I appreciate slowness. Slow mornings, slow burn dating, slow days, slow music, slow conversations.