i moved out of london & into my university halls a year ago. 

needless to say, first year was the best year of my life; wildly, wonderfully, & unbelievably overwhelmingly so. it was also the first in five years during which i didn't write poetry. 

obviously, the situation had to be remedied - so here's moonstruck: this strangely intimate mishmash of love letters to the friends i made / the man i fell in love with / the city i've learned to call "home".

as always, thank you for letting me share these bits & pieces of my life with you. i hope you enjoy reading & listening to them as much as i’ve loved living them.

birdsong. whistling. a grey-blue evening in early october, the sky a puff of lamp-smoke over the horizon. TRIS stands in a clearing feathered with autumn leaves auburn in the fading light, tree-branches hanging low, cars passing through the streets below. the scene is lit by a streetlamp that casts a burnished glow over the new city laid out before her. she’s been here for just a week & alone, one headphone in & one dangling by her wrist, this is the first time she’s been hit with the wonder of it all. this little place, with its slow-flowing river & pink-painted buildings & silvered hanging bridge, is where she’ll live & learn for the next three years. the word feels round, & full like the moon in her mouth. 

home.

so i’ve kissed like, two boys before. one stuck his tongue down my throat & i’ve already forgotten what the other tasted like. ellie gets with two guys that week & i swear to myself that the first time i fuck is not going to be in the loo in a club. i figure that’s how it goes. tongue down throat, fuck in the loo. 

i thought girls had to wear heels to clubs too. tripped over my own damn feet about four times in one night. henry gave me his shirt to walk home in & i didn’t stop shivering until about 4 that morning, but we stayed up talking until 5.45. the boys rocking back & forth like they were at sea something awful, the boys at sea over the waves & me somewhere back home onshore. sand under feet, grains of glass between my toes. 

i paint those toenails nails pink the next night & leave the boys to head out to sea alone & bake cookies for them to come home to because i don’t want them sleeping on nothing but a stomach-full of rum, better to fill it with something warm & sweet, i think, so i bake the cookies & leave them out with a saucepan of hot caramel & a toenail-pink post-it note that says “thought you’d be hungry x” & the boys come home just as i’m about to go to bed & we talk until 6 in the morning, caramel on our lips, & the dawn-light comes up & how wonderful, i think, this new life could be. nights studded with seashells & the days beginning in luminous dawn after dawn. 

i turn nineteen when the sun sets, to the sound of the girls singing happy birthday in about three different keys at once. a hallway of sparkling balloons, candles ablaze, a roomful of strangers-turned-family. this is home, i think. ben just next door with his stupid jokes & goofy laugh. henry & his music down the hall. violet, with her early-morning mugs of tea, george & anastasia playing chess until the lights flicker out every night. ellie crying into my shoulder from homesickness when the wine hits too hard, izzie letting me cry into hers when the wine isn’t enough to make it stop. fairy lights to mimic the city lights back in london. so this is home, this is home, this is home.