Penny For Your Thoughts

 Someday, I will lose you. I simply hope  that day comes at the end of a life  full of love. Not on your terms, and not on mine, simply on the terms  of time. Instead of  one more month, I hope  it's many years. Someday, I will lose you; you've become my biggest fear. -Emma Lancaster

 Love is the inability to wipe the smile off of my face as the number of hours until your arrival diminishes to minutes. Love is running up to you and smashing my face into your chest, taking that first big deep breath of your scent. Love is the toes of our shoes touching through dinner and soft touches on arms, marveling that you are flesh again. Love is the warmth of your person and kisses on your lips after dozens of kisses blown off my fingers towards you from far away. Love is getting coffee in the morning and pretending we are normal, thinking about how every Saturday could start like this. Love is showing you my new spaces, the places that I have learned. Love is blowing straw wrappers at each other over lunch and memorizing every inch of your face in the process. Love is holding hands in a museum that we wander for hours, happy to be there together. Love is accidentally napping because I heard the sound of your heart tapping with a warm blanket over us and basketball playin...

unconditional love in friendships: growing up growing apart loving forever loved from the start. "tried to change the ending, peter losing wendy." i love you just the same. -Emma Lancaster

 For my 16th birthday, my friends came over and we wreaked havoc on my parents' house in the most epic Nerf gun battle you could ever imagine.  One of the best hugs of my life was when I could finally see my friends again during the summer of 2020. The hardest I've ever laughed was riding in the back of a van, looking at Christmas lights, and noticing that the star at the top of the tree only had four points.  Before He Cheats makes me think of being a kid in the high school music department, singing my heart out to a song that didn't apply to me yet, before taking the stage. Culver's makes me think of the night we found out that our friends were finally dating. The Fault in Our Stars makes me think of pencil annotations and sweetness. I was pranked, and my locker was filled to the brim with plastic water bottles. We all learned the Footloose dance for a show. Every time I see a VR headset, I think of basement hangouts and Five Nights at Freddy's games. The mention ...

 To those who are friends, hello again. To friends from times past, I miss you. How are you? To the people I met in the first week of college, I've been cheering for you from here. To those I knew in high school, I'm cheering for you too. To those I knew in middle and grade school, look how far we've come.  To those who throughout the years have called me weird, I thank you because I am. To those who thought that I was not pretty or anywhere near it, know that beauty cannot define you or me. To those who whispered under their breath when I dared to be brave, be smart, I hope you've learned to use your voice in strength and for good. To those who picked apart my Instagram, did you find what you were looking for? To those who laughed behind my back, where is your true joy now? To those who saw me belittled, iced out, ignored, but did not speak up or to me, I understand why you saved yourselves. To those who watched my weight decline and saw the light leave my eyes, I prom...

 His face is becoming that of the man that my children will love and less of that which I fell in love with as a child myself. His features aren't as soft as they used to be, a bit more rugged and sharp, cut by the edges of one's early 20s. He's taller and broader, with a few days' shadow of stubble on his face that suggests that he's been too weathered to shave yet this week. His eyes, though, are unchanging and youthful and as joyous as they have been this whole time. Though time has molded the shapes of the boy I loved then into the man I love now, time has not changed the single quarter of brown in his eye that is so unique to him. Cheers to the man of hours, to our love, and to our lives. -Emma Lancaster

To move back into the bedroom you moved out of three years ago; To see friends you haven't seen in years; To talk about the friendship you left behind because you were being hurt; To see pictures of what was and know it wasn't love; To see engagement rings on friends at an age younger than your own; To listen to a playlist of summer flashbacks that take you to 5, 6, 7 years ago; These things are to remember love. These things are to remember why you left. These things are to rediscover home. -Emma Lancaster

 How poetic is it that the Holy Father's last day on Earth was spent in a celebration of the resurrected life? It was spent with others. He probably knew he was dying and spent the day addressing the people and being among them. He lived to serve. He perfectly lived the name of "Francis." He was a proponent of love in this world. -Emma Lancaster

What do you do When that was supposed to wreck you And it simply Just  Didn't? When you've felt too much before So you can't feel anymore And the news simply Just  Drops? When your heart begins to shatter In a familiar pattern And your eyes are simply Just Dry? -Emma Lancaster