104.

Last night, I watched the heat storm move in, stood at the kitchen window and drank a glass of water. The trees were black and singular, beat back by the wind. I don’t know what to say. I want there to be something to say, even just to myself. The wind whipped out of the storm and when the landscape lit up with lightning, syllables took shape in my head but nothing stuck. I filled my glass of water again.

There’s a way back. We tore holes and they were big enough to let us out so they are big enough to let us back in. There’s a skeleton beneath all of these— ‘things’ is the word?—things that have been happening. That storm. There was a language there and I know we both speak it. There has to be a way back. None of this makes sense. I’m moving somewhere west in August. I hope that is far enough away from all of this.

- J. Samuel Yingling

someday I'll be able to write like this.