I don’t want to write my way out of this feeling, cut it up and twist it into ink on white for you to see. I don’t want to find words for the joys of sleeping with the window open and walking up the stairs without running out of oxygen and stepping outside without a heavy coat, wandering, truly wandering, in the woods, searching for frogs and rocks and mosses to touch. I don’t want words to capture what it’s like to be in love in its most platonic sense, lying on the couch fully clothed and tucked into another’s arms against a still life of breath and white noise and other grayish anima. I don’t want to tell you about the feeling I get when I see white tadpole clouds drifting underneath a backdrop of dark gray altostratus that stretches out beyond the horizon, an inverted lake with sky frogs, or the outline of a single twisted yew on the bald side of the mountain, or the sound of keys jingling outside your door, warning of human company, or the way that shoveling snow in the middle of the night reminds you that not much has changed, really, that some things are eternal, that the white wisps in the sky are really sheets of ice and shards of them collect on airplane windows an inch away from where you can touch, that both the water you drank last month and the water that once kept your grandparents’ bodies inflated has passed through those shards and may well be in them now. I don’t want to touch the pond frog who peers at me with indifference or understanding but not awe, holding onto a branch with two tiny translucent hands which the salt of sweat on my hands would burn. I don’t want to write for the same reason I don’t want to cry, because I don’t want what is mine to be yours today. I’m in the wind and the frog is in the water listening to my frog noises. I shift my weight, and he vanishes into the bed of leaves below with one snap of his hind legs.
(2026-03-27 revised 2026-05-13)
Zoe Pian 