I tend to write the time before the date. Mirrors metastasize my mind.
Why can a bird feel the wind without ever needing its name; a fish swim the globe without ever knowing its length of travel. Movement the only real feeling of time.
We can feel the sun as time passes, each day a passing bubble the fish blows — like flipping the page to read the next action but realizing you’re holding the pen. Is solitude the acceptance of time or the absent need to fill it. We must reflect these realities we live in or we forget what it is to breathe. Stacked pillows, compression of air by the body — we live between that probability. 5 : 17.
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The smoke was so potent, full and ghastly. Growing up I always saw them dancing and drinking like nothing else in the world was complete but themselves. She always painted her face til it bore the colors of the rainbow and he would carve the bottom of a bottle just to watch. The smoke reminded me of all the moments that came before me yet, just as soon as it came, the lightning tore it from me; a monstrous gasp, demanding my return to the pixels in front of me. The only thing that could hold me now were my thoughts made of clock towers, and city lights which matched the sky but never seemed to meet his hands around the coffee cup.
Why were my clouds so disputant and his so silent? I could tell they were full but the only legible sign of energy was the reflection in his coffee up. See my mirror the way I dive into yours. My existence cannot meet the same force without your volume of thoughts to keep me, being. You’ll never know the inconsistencies of my boundaries til I’m shattering across your palette, littering your skies, but it’s just smoke. You just quicken your stare to the glow as you see my thoughts on my face. BoOm. another thunder of light to match the time, the sky, and our mirrors meeting to see the bird, the fish, the journal, the pen, the air between a stack of pillows — all the while, sitting, waiting, none. pm.

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Written by Jordan Strain: Co-founder and Co-president of Vocal Chords Journal. She is a senior at GW studying political science and psychological, brain sciences. Her special interests include singing, sewing, writing poetry sporadically, & reading academic nonfiction.