23

I__ haunted. We all are, I guess. We__e parentless, friendless, unloved, abandoned. The spirits of our deceased emotional anchors and proofs of existence will follow and demean us until we too roam a quiet lifeless world alongside them _ unable to speak _ our histories written in beach sand.

Sometimes you__e 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You__e just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you__e reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don__ feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but __om___ probably wouldn__ feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened every day and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you__l never be this young again but this is the first time you__e ever been this old. When you can__ remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee__ done. You__e going to breath in and out. You__e going to be fine in about five minutes.