when i ask you to look at me
i'm really asking if you can love me
What does it say about us when we have tamed light and taught it to say i love you! look at how i shine with all this love for you! And to say it across all distances and terrors and darknesses—unyielding and unrelenting.
(Sailor, I know you can’t come home right now but still the lighthouse shines on and on. Can you see it from where you are? Bump. Bump-bump-bump-bump. Bump-bump-bump. Is that your heartbeat or mine? Are those the waves beating against your ship? The flare of the lighthouse? A single pulse. Quadruple. And lastly a third. I can’t tell anymore.)
I read somewhere that all humans actually glow, but we can’t see it with our naked eyes. Bioluminescence, they call it. As you read this, your body and mine are glittering too. There’s something to be said about how comforting that can make a boring, dull girl feel.
I feel like things glow when they want to be found.
Like how fireflies attract mates and playful children with jars. How the stars call out to dreamers and astronauts and astrologers. And how the sunset begs for another picture, and maybe lowering the exposure this time will help in finally capturing a sliver of its prettiness. How your phone lights up with a notification from—ah, don’t answer him. Or how the apartment windows glimmer from where you stand on the city street and all you want is to go home. Or maybe how streetlamps beg for lovers to embrace under their warm, yellow light. And how the white fluorescence of liquor stores calls out to nightcrawlers. A moth to a flame. Icarus to the sun. An i love you lighthouse to its sailors.
It’s the desire to be seen, because to be seen is to be loved. So I’ll say all the silent hello’s and come here’s and please’s I want if I can get you to look—gaze—stare—ogle—glare at me.
We call out to space as much as we call out to each other. Imagine all the hellos we have sent to aliens. (I am going to ignore Fermi’s Paradox just for a moment here. For the sake of romanticism.) As if our own minute glows weren’t enough, we’ve been sending out waves of messages since the invention of the radio. (We’ve serenaded you aliens long enough, please send a love letter or postcard back won’t you?) Well how about a gift? It is gold and shiny and glows and begs to be found. It is the Voyager Golden Record. And it sends our greetings on behalf of the people of this planet (along with the other sounds of Earth like whales, music, earthquakes, kisses, and crying).
We have collected sounds of footsteps and heartbeats, trains and laughter into something that will continue to float off into deep space longer than humans will exist. We have knowingly left a voicemail for someone who will never call us back. All that is left are our shadows that no longer touch the ground and the attempt to be seen.
p.s. it is already august and it feels like the world is about to end and i have been writing here for so long and for such a short time yet i love it here. i never expected anyone, not even you, to ever read my words: my life is invariable, like the low hum of the air conditioning, and i don’t think i deserve much things and my saying that doesn’t make me special in any sense of the word but rather extremely negligible. but i love reading other people’s newsletters and feeling like i’m in on something that the rest of the world is clueless about, so i hope you feel that way too. i don’t tell these things to just anyone, you know. you’re seeing me and i see you too.
so beautiful!! by the end of this i had a big smile on my face<3
okay I'm done and still, wow.