moments.

moments I want to suspend & hold onto forever.

april 2nd 2018.

i was walking back from a piano concert, kind of drunk on the magic of the evening and spinning gleefully until i felt i was going to topple over from giddiness. my feet were killing me. i took my heels off and started dancing on UT campus, knowing that there were multitudes of students around. i didn't care. i remember this one couple at a red light rolled down their window, and the brunette girl in the front yelled, "YOU LOOK SO PRETTY." i smiled at her. i felt pretty, dancing in the street like i was casted in an overplayed 90's romantic comedy. it was so so dumb but so perfect.

march 17th 2018.

she was everything. transcendant in her slow songs, a blue sorrowful haze that made me cry; & a comet of pink & orange bubbly kinetic energy on the fast-paced songs. she reminded me of a mermaid, and a gangster at the same time. i danced until my feet and back hurt. i jumped so hard the ground shook. i was sweating and bumping into atleast 8 people at once but it was so exhilarating. it felt like dreamland.

february 10 2018.

it was storming violently outside, which ruined all of our elaborate plans to go downtown together. nobody trusts me to drive in the rain, mostly because the entire right side of my car is a catastrophe (minor details.)

it was all of my best friends & I. (ben & caden aren't pictured.) caden's mom owns a salon, and we ended up hanging out in the empty salon late at night. he blasted the music, and we just danced like complete idiots in the dark. we had a swing dance competition, i was baptized in the religion of rap music, and maddie did 12047332109478 lifts. i remember spinning and laughing so hard that i was rolling on the salon floor with Audrey (which probably had hair on it. minor details.) calloway's an excellent swing partner, in case anyone wanted to know.

we went home and ate this organic vanilla cake, which sounds repulsive, but it was actually insanely good. i distinctly remember caris's mom coming into the kitchen around 1:00 AM and looking at us all adoringly; she said, with Betty-esque flair, "well, don't you all look like one big family." we were. we are.

december 21st 2017.

downtown knoxville will forever be the most incandescently breathtaking in december. when it's all lit up, bathed in christmas lights & blushing faces & guitarists playing Christmas songs in Market Square.

audrey & i were wandering around our favorite stores aimlessly. her & I were intently interpreting a somewhat prophetic dream i'd had the night before. mid-explanation, my best friend stopped me & said: "Skylar, I just want you to know, I think you're a true artist in every sense of the word. You are so so interesting and make art with your words." it was one of the greatest compliments i'd ever received. and coming from audrey ruth, Van Gogh's apprentice herself, meant the world. i'll always remember this freezing decemeber day.

november 26th 2017.

my knee says, "you're a walking overdose in a great coat." which is my favorite lyric from the 1975. it strikes very closely to my heart.

looking back on this night, i had no idea how endearingly pivotal it was. i was on caris's roof, stargazing (my usual extracurricular) & deeply trying to squash down this piercing feeling that something was off with the relationship i was in at the time. my friends were there for me, dissecting petty punctuation and wiping tears from my eyes. i always seemed to cry over nothing. but i think crying over nothing, when accompanied by your best friends on a roof with frozen yogurt, is an art form.

october 28th 2017.

i was probably a bird in another life. my irrevocable obsession with high places has been in me ever since i was a little girl. this particular night, i was on top of a roof in Isle of Palms. i was kind of reflecting, letting the watercolor of the sky melt into me.

the previous week had been one of the best of 2017. i toured college of charleston, feeling my dreams solidify before my eyes. it was a euphoric fall break, for more reasons than a thousand. my sister and i grew insanely close. we wrote the names of boys we had crushes on in the sand together. we laughed until 4:00 AM. i danced on the roof.

the beach always seemed to remind me that im a SPECK. a significant, worthy speck, but a speak nonetheless. it puts me in my place, a reminder that the expanse of the universe is insurmountable and my problems are nothing. f. scott fitzgerald once said that there's nothing the ocean can't heal, and i believe in that wholeheartedly.