You think it's a secret, but it never was one.

I've been ineffectually trying to do something for hours without getting anything substantial done. The choice: to sleep now, or to stay up until I eventually finish one item of work? I guess I've opted for the second without realizing it.

I was not made properly to survive in this existence. I don't know what else to say except that nothing convinces me anymore of the things for which I never previously needed convincing. What I need is my family: My mother, scolding me for not focusing on schoolwork. My father, reminding me that I was once upon a time even less wise than I am now. My brother, pestering me to play cards with him. I need a house on a cul-de-sac in Ohio within a five-minute jog of my best friend's house, and I need her to squint at me when I show up breathless at her backdoor at two in the morning, and I need to giggle over horrible stories about middle-school crushes with her until the first hints of sunrise.

Acute nostalgia is my poison of choice, it seems.

I borrowed the title of this post from a poem by Ralph Angel, which has haunted me since last summer:

You think it's a secret, but it never was.
Sell the house, move to the beach, this isn't his closet,
there are no phantoms here.

You think that if you know the truth you'll forgive her. "I lied,"
she said. "I was afraid, afraid I'd be left alone."

Do we not each day leave this world
together, half asleep, a goodbye kiss steadying ourselves
against the seats of the train?

Do we not meet again and, always
dreaming, not find a word for it, the dream that would exclude us?

Someone remembers something that happened a long time
ago. She forgot it, it changed everything.

What can I tell you that you don't already know?
That life is sad? That this moment
brims with too-sweet wisteria?

And you, too, are sad. And hopeful. Adjustments
were made, the way they can be now.

You pick up your knife and almost
look at it, and put it down again. That she destroys
her life by keeping alive.