looking back on 2025
there is a drawing taped to my fridge I made this time last year with a blue river down the middle of the page, a backpack on one side and a stick figure with a heart too big for its body on the other
since then, I flew out of 15 airports around the world where I recorded powerpoint presentations while waiting at the gate, sent “boarding!” selfies to keep one of my only superstitions at bay, spent four hours in a hospital bed while Jael and Vanessa kept vigil in the hallway, and once facetimed Alexa in a predicament, laughing, then crying, finally laughing until it was time to go because everything is romantic comedy,
and always coming home to a handwritten letter from my mom who watered my plants and stocked my fridge with fresh fruit, who lost her mom this year, who is a girl who loves her mother just like me and taught me almost everything I believe
which is: swaying in a crowd on a sticky summer night, Abi’s head tucked into my neck, streamers bursting through the air at the height of our favorite song, walking into Miya’s outstretched arms in a dark hotel room in Berlin when I couldn’t contain my sadness but she always could, filling the whole back room of a sushi restaurant in Toronto with everyone I miss in New York the night before a half we all signed up for, a pre-race tradition Jenny started years ago
and since then I kept running, around the Banpo track every Friday, in a world major right beside my friends, for 42 hours through the American desert, waiting for Sungman knowing he’ll emerge any minute, looking for Jeongil up ahead, texting Gabby, you know that feeling where you already miss what’s happening right now? and her going, “I know exactly the feeling, I didn’t want it to end”
looking back, I almost can’t remember the depression that enveloped me for nearly the first half of the year, a sudden onset, a loss of appetite for the world around me, my clothes loosening around my frame and Rafi messaging me every weekend to get me outside even though I usually turned him down, until one spring day I noticed that I felt okay, and then a little better, and then like myself again,
I played a big hand in love and folded, played another and she moved away, and I wanted so badly something that wasn’t meant to be mine on this timeline and let him go, which is all to say I don’t really believe love is a game or gamble but an altar where I’m not afraid to dance,
and god I loved to dance, in the middle of a Thai forest on my birthday under a half moon, a techno club in a fifth story walk up in Itaewon until the sky started to lighten, with Jinju and Yulim and Jun, Hana, Hyungkyung and Dong Hyun in a sweaty garage, in room 4407 with the blinds drawn
and if I were to sit down at my grandmother’s dining table again to color my hopes for next year, I might start with a door, ajar, if I can get the angle right, with light spilling out just spilling out in all directions
