Side A

Is it better to speak or to die?

As an appreciator of Luca Guadagnino, I could never answer. As a writer, my choice should be inevitable.

To write is not only to confess, but to contain. What is put into words demands its own space. It demands to be seen. What is left unsaid does not disappear. It grows restless, festers, eats from the inside. Silence, or death as some might call it, can only lead to deterioration. Expression prevents that, even though it comes with its own messes.

The truth is that there is no clean way to carry feeling. It either rots inside you or bleeds for all to see. Writing is choosing blood over decay. It is the most vulnerable one can be, the deepest part of oneself exposed. And if death is inevitable, I will let it arrive through an endless red flow of thought, far more beautiful than a still, brown decay.

It is better to speak than to die.

Or maybe, then to die. 

Interlude

There are things that would simply not survive without writing. Love, more than anything, is preserved through language. If it is not spoken into the world, there is no proof it ever existed. I refuse to let that be the way it ends.

Side B

Now, and then again, we live in time 

I still think of the days I would rest my head on your shoulders, softly enough not to hurt you, but close enough to match your breathing to mine. The sun would hit my face just right, and all I would hear were the small sounds of people talking. Right there, I would think about how, just like the rays that warm me up and the words placed into the world, we would be forever.

I could not tell how I got there, and I know you would be a stranger if even one detail had been missing. But none of that matters, where we began or where we might end. It is still real enough to feel in my lungs. For one thing I can vouch - though I am young and never certain, I am sure of all the love I have for you.

So I will close my eyes and feel you here in the moments I carry. Because maybe when I open them, I will be much older and too far from you. I will recall those old times, every flower I bought and the way you made me laugh. Your songs, your clothes, your rituals. I never fully understood much of it, but I remember every detail. It is all deep within me. I could not get it out if I tried.

Through time, I have learned this is just the way things go. I have made peace with sending you love through other people. I cannot count how many times I have wished you well. All I can do is sit with my memories, my words and the sun.

Reprise

With you, I have chosen to write, to bleed. And of course, blood is known to stain. What is put on the page lives forever. We are nothing without our words. When all else is gone, they are the mark we leave behind. They are our soul pressed into permanence. This is the only way to be alive once more.

As a great artist once said, we write to taste life twice. I eternalize it here. Let it be carved across my body.

Alive once, under the same sun that still finds me now.