Street Lights and Lace

"I remember every metaphor I used for you.

It’s beautiful how quickly I ran out.

It was just so difficult to describe

a forest at the bottom of an ocean on fire.

You were soft,

I was quiet.

I remember every park bench,

every broken sidewalk,

every open sky.

It was so whole.

I remember breathing,

and the lovely amount of effort it required.

I hope you do too.

They say writers remember the important things;

I say they are liars.

I remember you wore a purple flannel

the first time I saw you,

even though it isn’t your favorite color.

I remember that you take your coffee black,

and your tea with plenty of honey.

I remember the way your eyes changed color

based on the weather,

and the way you looked at the sky,

like it was endless.

You were endless.

I remember everything you taught me.

They say writers remember the important things;

I remember you."

Outlined in Oceans

Hi, hello. It's been a moment since we've last spoke. I've learned a lot about myself lately: I was built for coffee shops not bars, formals are fun, I have chill people in my life, I think I know what I want to do with my life, consistency is hard, I take too many polaroids, and I love you a lot. I was literally jumping up and down when the package came in the mail! The theme for our sorority's formal was "Red Rose Ball" so naturally, the dresses were supposed to be long-- I kind of feel like I cheated a bit, but it felt like the perfect opportunity to buy this dress I've been swooning over for months! This Forever Love and Lemons dress didn't let me down! It is absolutely flawless, from the delicate lace detailing to the mesh illusion. I'm still stunned by how intricate it's made. I can't wait for another opportunity to wear it out!

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Dress: For Love and Lemons

Fragmented Fairytales

Once upon a time, there was a girl of merely eighteen, who lived in a great world of abundance. She spent her days spilling her dreams into a leather-bound journal and her nights contently living inside her head. She looked outside her window every morning at the endless rows of wheat, sipping her coffee, wondering silently to herself where those fields ended and where life began.

She left on a Friday, her journal still in hand, her dreams still in head, temporarily trading her world of abundance for a few feet of suitcase and a couple of strange beds. She took a few planes, rising above the veins of her town, watching them mingle and intertwine. The fields of wheat became rows of humbling skyscrapers. The flat, mundane land turned lush and green right before her eyes. On the final plane toward her dream world, she watched the sunrise against the Atlantic ocean while traveling 25,000 feet above it. She wasn't just in the veins of a city anymore, she was in the heart of the world. She suddenly realized, this is where life began.

For the next month, she simply wandered.

Every morning she woke up as if it was for the first time. She looked outside her window at the nearly extraterrestrial world the lay before her, sipping her coffee, wondering silently to herself why she ever counted life in years rather than miles. For the first time, she felt understood. Her lightness was appreciated and her darkness embraced by cities who always left her with more questions than answers. 

Surrounded by languages she knew she would never be able to imitate, she met other travelers in English pubs, all of them intriguing, all of them gone before she had the chance to say goodbye.

Still clutching her train ticket ever-so-nostalgically, she journaled in the famous coffee shops of Amsterdam, watching smoke delicately dance all around, tugging at strangers' lips then disappearing into nothingness, as elusive and unpredictable as her own heart. She tried to tread quietly, knowing this world would soon forget her, but even so, her laughter still mixed with friendly giants and naked bikers in magical parks. Red lights still bounced off her own eyes and reflected into another, eerily familiar set. She soon realized that she didn't know how to feel about leaving the city that had effortlessly and unexpectedly captured her heart, so she simply felt- her salty tears catching on the slight curve of her smile before dropping, permanently etched into the water that absentmindedly flows through the Dutch canals.

In Paris, she observed the city shrinking right along with her ego as a lift casually scaled her up to the top of the Eiffel. Distanced from both earth and reality, her red dress was utterly consumed by the glittering tower. She watched her journey come to an end in The City of Lights, concluding it all with one final act of permanence.

She hoarded memories, selfishly keeping them all for herself, safe in her mind, sharing them only with those present and of course her nearly full journal, knowing the world she was now flying back to would never fully understand or even truly care.

But she cared. And that was enough.