Fog as a Body I Once Lived In
Some nights the fog reaches me before the memory does. New York swallowed me; Sydney softened me. This is the story of the body I lost, the one I rebuilt, and the ghosts that still follow.
Notes from a city I carried home
Some nights the fog gets there first.
Before memory.
Before I can stop it.
It sits at the doorway.
The way New York used to stay in my clothes.
Long after I was inside.
Long after I washed them.
I got high to blur the edges.
Not to escape.
Just to make the shape less sharp.
I didn’t have words yet.
Only friction.
New York took me in whole.
Sydney is where I wake up inside the fog and forget why.
The air here is warm.
That still surprises me.
There was a night before someone left.
A body next to mine.
Breathing lined up.
The stupid hope that if nothing moved, nothing would end.
Ridgewood felt submerged.
I smoked on Woodward.
Walked until hours fell apart.
Sundays bled into Mondays.
Every morning already wrong.
What stays isn’t him.
It’s the cats.
Warm weight.
Fur on my hands.
I fed them like it mattered.
I left thinking I’d be back.
I didn’t know that was the last morning.
I didn’t know doors close quietly.
I can’t remember the walls of the room.
Just a yellow shirt.
Too bright.
Like a warning I pretended not to read.
The fog isn’t a person.
It’s the city.
It’s wanting somewhere else so badly you wake up there
and still haven’t arrived.
The Real Version
This is the version of me I told myself I was, and then there’s the real one. Shaped by New York nights, quiet truths, and the moments that forced me to see myself without the story. This is her.
There is a version of events I have never written down. It changes nothing and explains everything.
Re-entry
Reentry is never clean. You come back changed, carrying versions of yourself that don’t fit the rooms anymore. This is the moment I stepped into a life I left behind, and the truth that followed me through the door.
Coming back to Sydney felt like stepping into a life I left mid-sentence.
Nothing fit exactly.
Not even me.