yugen.

It's funny how the mind associates things with other things. How I associate the smell of burnt paper with the taste of honey-covered skin. One particular honey-covered skin. How I can't help but think of the color of that old bruise of mine, the one that lingered, when I see a thundercloud.

I sometimes think about the way we'd stumble over our own words when we were thinking too hard. About who really let the dogs out. Or why the best of America drifted to Paris in Fitzgerald's time.

Sometimes I think it's unfair the way December rolls around. do you remember how, on that mischievous night, we solved that annoyingly difficult puzzle, the one with Jackson Pollock's Number 8, which you stole from your cousin, the art geek? And your silly twelve-years-old brother came into the room and threw raw eggs at us? remember how the runny wet yolk of one landed by the corner of my eye, and you thought I was crying?

And in some ways, I don't want to look back on the peonies left on my coffee table, the ones we forgot about weeks after weeks, because we spent all our time stowed away in bed, under thick covers, watching Arrested Development and eating microwaved meals. I don't want to look back on the way their thin leaves rotted like crooked smiles and their petals melted in the big mug, the one with sleepy snoopy on it. The way their insides bruised and stained and decayed. Now I always leave them there until they turn into skeletons.

You used to call out to me to bring you cookies, after having watched them for minutes on end and gotten depressed.

Today's idiom from my chengyu calendar reads, "one day, three winters", meaning when you miss somebody, twenty-four hours can feel like one thousand and ninety five days.