Maybe if i can collect pretty days i can string em together. This year’s would be spaced weirdly to remember the time of strange distances. i’ll hang them all over my memory. Combing through time worn photo books of all the lives i’ve bothered living. Retrieving every love’s sweet warmth.

i’ll decorate my interior with the times we laughed til we cried. That crowd in the elevator all sparkles and cheer; unforgettably ringing in 2008. We are now on several different continents. We are still so young and beloved to each other. Plenty more memories since. They’re all here, somewhere. Piled up haphazardly, waiting for me to stop by, sift through.

If i ever feel lonely i might meander these passages rediscovering well-spent moments. So few have physical photos. Too few. i can press back into the depths where i keep spent time, and forage for solid details. i’ll slog through the morass of nostalgia to mine gems compressed by years. i can restore the artwork to its original glory. Decorate my whole psyche.

This is also where i’ll come to have good cries. What is a better grief than one of lost joy? Perhaps all sorrow is really only that, anyway. Sometimes you just gotta listen to sad music for a while. Sometimes i visit these parts of my story to feel the absence of happinesses that once felt immortal. To laugh-cry at myself for expecting such. Sometimes i have to grieve.

And oh, how long and winding these hallways are! This palace where midwinter tucks me in. A collection of pretty days, all strung together, equal parts sorrow and joy for having happened at all.