ifyourefree

[ifyourefree]

It Rained at the End of 2023

I'm cradling a half-cold cup of coffee as I wait for the year to end. It's the way you like it, stronger than how I'd normally have it.

There's a stack of books that arrived a half-hour ago—I bought them all in a blind fury, possessed by the thought of you and the books which had once lined your bookshelf, lying in your luggage bags in a stony sleep. I think I'll buy more books in 2024.

It's funny how there are so many ends and beginnings, everything always ending or beginning. In January of 2023, I spent months in Italy with my head bowed over a glass of cherry-almond liquor, spent my nights feverishly drunk in the dimly-lit smoke room of the small town's bar, at dingy stations waiting for the morning train, in the arms of people I never really talked to.

The friend I used to talk to for hours, throwing lines of Richard Siken at each other like a sing-along, doesn't talk to me anymore. She became one of the many names in my contacts list that I haven't yet found the time to delete. I still talk to my poetry professor and she suggests that I buy the newer print edition of Dictee since you have mine—she signs her emails with, "Warmly", just like you.

And just as quickly as you had entered my life, you left. The change in temperature is striking, as if you had been holding my hand before letting go completely, my bare fingers flopping uselessly in a snowy wind. It hurts to know that as I'm standing at the edge of the beach, the full moon leaving me speechless in awe, it's the afternoon for you. And nothing in your vicinity can serve as a reminder for me, for us, for the time and spaces we shared.

[ifyourefree]

Brain Swirl

The light glances over my face momentarily and I think of my mother's right hand. She'd cradle my cheek in her palm, quietly at the red lights, and I'd try to memorize the rough of each finger. Her fingers were always cold, and my face was aways warm. We never looked at each other, eyes focused on the road ahead.

It's agonizingly hot and I miss these pineapple cherry popsicles I had one summer in Palm Springs. They were from a girl I met at the hotel pool. She was wearing a pink bikini. I sat on the pool ledge and ate three popsicles in one sitting. The third one melted all over my hands.

It's hot, it's so hot. Clothes feel restricting so I take my shirt off—it's somewhere on the floor. I'm cutting apples in the kitchen, six uniform slices in a clover-print bowl. Lying on my stomach, feeling the coolness of the sheets, munching slowly on the apple slices. The room is bathed in blue—I want it to feel like I'm underwater so I'm playing shoegaze. I'm hoping these small things trick my mind into thinking that it's not 90 degrees this October evening. It's so hot, I'm sweating like crazy. I open the windows and pray for wind or rain.

[ifyourefree]

I Need A Lint Roller

The mornings have been tougher than they used to be—I just can’t seem to be able to pull myself out of bed. The blankets are too soft and lovely, I want to press them against my face forever. The light pulls, streaming through the blinds and I’m trying to ignore them. They’re waving at me now, but I pretend that I don’t see. 

Breakfast is a weird assortment of things. Pasta, a pork bun, an apple, iced coffee, and taiyaki. I wonder if I’ll regret this. The coffee isn’t enough, it never really is. I’m on the beige couch, leaning my head back against the wall and tracing patterns into the lightscapes on the ceiling. Running my eyes over the new plant shelf, the marbled monstera, the wild lilies dotting the coffee table. I close my eyes momentarily and thirty minutes pass. I let the minutes go. 

Bathed in the yellow of the room, I think of the color blue. 

Northside is very quiet. Even on Saturday nights, I hear each of my steps as I walk past the closed shops, lit up with fairy lights and dim street lights. Everything is so still and quiet, the air feels thick as I light a cigarette and watch the moon. The air is cold and I breathe in tight gulps of it, letting the smoke drift up and over like a summer haze. My head feels funny, I let my hair down in my face, I watch the moon through the slants of dark brown. It looks like a pearl. Gleaming gleaming gleaming until it’s gone under the clouds. I miss you, ardently.

I need a lint roller. My black jacket has white specks in it. I let it be, though. In a way, it looks like stars in a night sky, scattered and messy and just existing. It’s dumb, but that’s just what I make of it. I’m a cigarette in—I’m always a cigarette in. When am I not on a cigarette, when am I not… It’s beautiful out here, I’m learning that there’s a lot more to see when I’m outside. I’m turning unafraid. Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer. I’ve been turning inwards for some time now, but I’m learning to change that. 

[ifyourefree]

Just A Stone's Throw Away

The truth is that I am losing the words. And it's frightening in that I used to think that I had them all. But now I'm just swimming in consonants and scribbled-out sayings, I really don't know what to do with myself anymore.

You can take my mouth and take away my hands and it wouldn't make much of a difference. I think my skin is falling away faster than I can hold onto it. I can only hope that I get easier to look at over time. That's the only way I know how to say it, because it's one of the things that have been swirling in my headspace this week. Like a washing machine on infinite quarters, I let it soak and fester in the white.

And I'm glad that the time is only now, because I cherish the time we share together. Because it means that there are seconds, minutes, more. But what's funny is that I find myself missing all three (past, present, future), and by the time you've read this, the minute it took has passed into history. I miss when you read this. I miss it dearly. I miss you.

The words are leaving before I spit them out. The words are heading for the door. The words are Irish exiting and I miss them. The words are already home, warm in bed, and I'm wishing that I could've held them for a minute longer. Sometimes, I think I made the words up—they weren't even there in the first place. And the whole time it was just me, turning slowly in a circle.

[ifyourefree]

Losing Touch (The Worst Feeling)

Last night, I had a somewhat good conversation as I nursed a highball glass of white wine which I took two strained sips out of. 

You see, poetry is a spectrum, just like many things in this world. Poetry comes in so many different forms: concrete (like a villanova vs. a haiku), emotion (sad, happy, wanting, etc.), and also the physical (written, spoken, the works), and even more past that. Subject matter is also a big thing in that the content of a poem can be a plethora of things. 

Those who know me well may know that I’m not a conversation-starter; I only talk first if there’s something interesting about the other person that I’m curious about. 

In this case, what drew me to this person, what made me start the conversation, is that this person is also a poet, and from what I had seen online, our styles were vastly different. From what I had seen, this person looked successful, featuring in an indie film, winning medals, going on a small tour, something that the high-school me had wanted so badly. She was the epitome of a “successful writer” in my books, and as I flicked through her Instagram highlights, I became painfully aware of how far off I have been in my art, hiding behind acronyms and aliases because a part of me is too afraid to own up to my own words. I wish I could be courageous like her and belt out my lines like an opera singer, stand in front of a crowd with a microphone in hand, voice unchanging and brilliant, getting paid for the words that leave my tongue. I want to be able to talk with the light on.

The conversation was nice, me spitting out a couple of questions like a vending machine regarding the path of her poetry, its general content, what poetry is to her and what her major was (not English, it’s Public Health), and why (poetry was a personal hobby, not a career path). And as much as I did enjoy hearing this side of the table (one that seems to be very prevalent in the world—we all know poets don’t ever make much money if that’s all they do), I could feel myself spiraling mid-sip, the wine in my mouth tasting a lot bitter than it did before. A large part of the human condition has to do with jealousy I think, me being unable to be truly passionate and at ease with my own work, desiring to be “successful” and yet also afraid of being perceived for said work. It reminded me of that long period of time in which I couldn’t bring myself to write lyrical poetry anymore, unable to fit a certain number of feet and losing rhythm, the syllables running in-and-out as if they were a chaotic symphony. Losing touch with the sole thing that kept you alive is a scary thing. Ah, I don’t really know what I’m going to do if I lose it now.

[ifyourefree]

Love Centrale

It’s Wednesday. I’m eating a cherry popsicle, the syrupy sweetness of it dripping down the side of my mouth and onto the pinstriped white sheets / staining my teeth pink. Night Lights. Gerry Mulligan. Exchanging words with a cute Italian barista. I think of asking for his name next week, and visiting tomorrow. (He says “sounds good”!) He sounds a little British, which I find intriguing. The apartment is cold, my fingers cramp as I type this. When Sunny Gets Blue. McCoy Tyner. My bare face burning on this rare sunny day. I squint behind my glasses. Calling my mom for 45 minutes, saying “hi” to my brother. Ignoring my credit card statement and drinking again. I’m thinking of buying bartending equipment, a dangerous (and fun) hobby. Amarena Syrup. Hinge. I’m unable to take people seriously. I joke about smashing a guy’s head open with a brick and he likes it. (I laugh heartily at this conversation.) Chewing on a sour cherry gummy…I gave one of my cherry lollipops to a guy at the bar last night and I wonder if he thought I was flirting (I hope not). Tell Me When. Gerry Mulligan Sextet. Thinking about picking up the cello again. I miss surrounding myself with music, controlling sound as I please. Music feels kind of intimate nowadays for some reason. Kind of awkward. Want to kiss someone so hard that their lip bleeds. I hate fizzy water (frizzante), but it’s all we have right now so I drink it. Going to my friends’ housewarming party, buying them roses in celebration. Solitude is a single cloth curtain. Your hands in May.

[ifyourefree]

The Night is Still Young

It’s almost 11PM, I’ve just finished up a presentation and started working on a study guide for my Italian final on Friday. Right now, I’m listening to jazz centralé, a playlist I made last week that’s been my only light as of lately. Italian is confusing—I feel like I’m swimming in consonants and syllables that aren’t meant to be together—and yet I know that to Italians, to people who speak this language, the letters that look like incomprehensible conjunctions to me are in fact, systematically arranged in a manner that can even be beautiful to them. I’m just on the outside, I guess. 

I think I’m perpetually bored of the things around me. Nothing really excites me, I think. The people here do not make my heart flutter, the fashion is drab, I take a shot from a guy I don’t know at the bar and sink it down. He swears that it’s better than vodka, and I guess it kind of is (it goes down easier), but it has a sour aftertaste that I dislike. I find out he’s eighteen and his friend is twenty-four. What an odd pair, I think. I sip on my redbull-and-vodka mix quietly and watch the people around me glow, gazes warm on other people, a protective arm around a shoulder. I let myself hang loose on the side of a cushioned couch and smoke. Watching, I make my observations and mentally scribble them down. 

The people in here are warmth reincarnate, sidling up to each other on their little stools and holding hands amidst the hazy orange of the bar’s basement. There’s a ring, I realize, where the people inside dance amongst themselves like a masquerade ball, hiding behind their masks and glitter and ruffles, twirling and dancing around each other while I, an outsider, watch them from a heavily outlined rim.

[ifyourefree]

光と水

It rained for the first time since I landed in Southern California today. I watched the raindrops fall minutely here and there at first, so light that I didn’t even think they were raindrops at first, until they gave way to a sweltering barrage of rain that pelted the windows of our car. The gleam of a winter day turned around to darkness, a change so swift that I wasn’t able to see the sunset today, just a bleak gray horizon. 

Toshifumi Hinata’s music is what rain would sound like if it had a melody, a piano, a wind chime. I think of playing it loudly in my headphones as I lie flat against the pavement in front of the house, soaking up the rain as if it were the last time. 

We’re in the car; Mom likes my Glossier You perfume. I talk about booking a nice brunch for us, a last “hooray” before I’m off. Dad and I play UNO, and I win twice, he wins once. I do a little victory dance, whooping and hollering as Mom takes pictures of us. I write to Rebecca, asking how she’s doing, what she’s been up to, a music or book recommendation if she had any. 

Time keeps running, running, running. I haven’t been able to sleep well lately, kept awake by all the possibilities of what’s to come. I hope to sleep soundly soon.

[ifyourefree]

Where Has The Time Gone?

It smells like cinnamon and walnuts in the house—like autumn, honestly. And it’s a bitter reality to understand that it is in fact not October—it is December going into January. I baked coffee cake just to reminisce on the leaves that turned orange and red, fleetingly, so that their brief existences stay stagnant in the front of my mind. 

I cleaned out my closet today, ripped up the college brochures I never bothered to read, a bookmark worn thin that used to sport a Shakespearean scribble. Found a “letter diary” I started (and ended, I guess) in 2021, a letter from my brother, mother, and father on three separate pages. My father’s letter ended with his last sentence starting a new page, a crudely drawn arrow pointing at, “I will run to you!”

I have settled on deserting the desire to search for other people, I think. No more running after missed connections. More honesty. More being honest with what I want for myself. More being truthful about myself. No more hiding. No more wanting to be someone who I am not. I make my own path.

[ifyourefree]

Tabernacle Heart

There’s something oddly human about blowing heat into your hands on a cold night. Same thing goes for the way in which you rub the first knuckle of your index finger with your thumb in a measured, consistent movement when you’re thinking hard about something.

The heart is a tabernacle. I look at you in the waning light and I think your eyes are soft, your face is kind. I’ve come to realize that I really don’t know what to do about this, and that scares me sometimes. I looked at you the first time and I wanted to see you again, and again, and again, saying that the next will be the last and yet, I find myself looking for you in every crowd I see. Breathe a sigh of relief (so slight) when I find you within the montage of lives, so light that I barely catch my own actions.

Lately, I find it hard to end my writings in a way that feels satisfying. I don’t think I know how to “end” things. Is an end always necessary, though? Can’t we be satisfied with being within an in-between space of existence?

[ifyourefree]

Candied Ephemera—Show Me How To Say Your Name

Chewing on your name like a caramel piece, the vowels and consonants sticky, forcing me to relay them real slow as I taste both salt and sweetness. 

Did you know that I stood in front of the mirror for an hour yesterday, pulling your name this way and that in my mouth like a warbling of a Gobstopper? I said it so many times I sucked off all the hard sugar layers to reveal the pale pink center. And even then, it wasn’t enough, so I put another in my mouth and repeated the process again.

[ifyourefree]

Home Is Where the Heart Is

I recently got the Spotify feature that creates a playlist for you 3-4 times a day depending on your music listening trends (thanks Nhi)—yesterday evening was called “fun meme sunday afternoon” and at the moment, it says “solitude somber monday afternoon”. The first piece opens up with a slight chorus of songbirds (lidth jays), Ichiko Aoba’s “Parfum d'étoiles” permeates the room like I’m submerging myself in a lukewarm tub of water, chin-deep in prettiness that is so sweet, I feel a little sad as I listen. 

Tonight, I leave home again. I think I’ve learned that as I grew, home is something that’s always temporary. I am a nomad. I run from place to place (like Murray the Rabbit Boy). I tell people my hometown is (insert blank), when really, it’s a collage of multiple destinations, a board of red knots and ties and pins scattered across Southern California, Hawaii, and Korea. (I passed by a ginkgo tree last week and thought about Daejeon, the yellow skirts falling onto the sidewalks like early snow.) But it’s too complicated, so I simplify it to a singular place. 

“Asleep Among Endives” plays next and I think of running at the beach when I was ten, a scarf of seaweed wound tightly around my neck as I taunt the nearing waves and tip-toe in and out of the water. I think I turn around to look at you, smile the same smile I had for years (real big, minus two front teeth), turn back around and chase the sun until it falls away to reveal the fleece blanket of night, stars cast in small, white specks. I say my home is near the beach because I grew up with it, hunted sand dollars and crabs in toy buckets, bartering for another kid’s ice creams or candies. I say that my home is near the water but I’ve always been too afraid to go in after I tried to save a beach toy and almost drowned instead. 

I think my home is in the people I meet, if anything. Whenever I’m feeling too distanced, I remember the smell of my grandmothers—warm chestnuts, christmas cacti, and empty beds. I think of my mother’s collarbones, the twin gold rings she has on her left hand. That shirt my dad used to wear when I was young, beige with palm trees, smelling strongly of cigarettes. The way my brother eats, mouth stretched so big, his eyes would close with each bite. I go by Jinji now, a name I stole from the cat I used to know, an overfed and spoiled brat who didn’t let me pet her sometimes. I go by Jinju, too, my grandmother's favorite: pearl.

I think the fact that I never really have a “home” to go back to makes the concept of it so much more important to me…like it’s an attachment thing because there is nothing to be attached to, if that makes sense.

[ifyourefree]

HOWDOYOU WANTOREADME?

I’m walking home at 10PM and Joji’s new album, Smithereens, is blasting in my right ear—it’s fucking cold and I look up at the sky and it’s so fucking beautiful I think I’m gonna die. It’s so pretty I think I forget to breathe and I realize this because I can’t see the tell-tale puffs of white in the air—I don’t breathe for twenty seconds as I’m captivated by the moon and the countless stars embedded into the cloak of this November night. I’m transfixed until my body forces me alive once more. 

I haven’t gone to English 117 in two weeks out of sheer laziness, but I went to it today and I am reminded about how intellectually deepthis shit is…like holy shit I’m sitting there and my mind is blown. We’re going over Anthony and Cleopatra today, and the professor is talking about how there are two different kinds of beauty in this world:

The Adherent / Conditioned: beauty that is beautiful because you expect it to be beautiful

The Free / Self-Subsisting: beauty that is not where or what you expect it to be—(ex. a pretty leaf on the sidewalk—usually, you walk outside to go somewhere, not to hunt down the perfect leaf. It’s a nice surprise and you might snap a pic of it just because it’s unexpectedly beautiful)

I’m not entirely sure which category the moon would be…I’m leaning towards “adherent” because we oftentimes look at the moon and admire it, yes? I guess we expect the moon to be pretty at some level, but I think every time I take the effort to look up at the night sky the moon still finds ways to make me gasp in awe and appreciate it. It’s beautiful, and yes I’ve probably seen this phase of the moon a gajillion times already, but the pure beauty behind it still catches me by surprise each time. 

In other words, I love the moon and in saying so, I also love you. I love beauty, I love the beautiful moon, and I think you are beautiful too. And this leads me to the next part of the lecture where Stendhal Syndrome was introduced as the syndrome in which beauty can make one physically ill—beauty is both an addition and a subtraction to the body as one is both astounded by appreciation and yet astounded to the point where they are de-centered and troubled. 

I wonder if by seeing the beauty within you I am both in love and yet repulsed by it. I think the factor is so ginormous it scares me, and so I cower from the mere thought of loving you. Like the man who suffered a heart attack in the Uffizi Galleries (Florence, Italy) because of Botticelli’s artistic grandeur—I’m afraid by how sweet it all is. Like the moon, how I stopped breathing while I examined the expanse of the starlit web. You ask how I read you, and I say it like this.

[ifyourefree]

Fall Playlist

the sun was in my eyes by American Pleasure Club, Teen Suicide

Paul by Big Thief

Nothing Compares by The Weeknd

Compass by The Neighborhood

A thought on an autumn night by JANNABI

#playlist

[ifyourefree]

Sylvia & Company; If You Love Someone, You Love Who They Love

The sunlight hits the leaves of the sweet gum tree perfectly and I am reminded of their vibrancy—how the ones on the ground used to be just as bright as the ones above, how perhaps a week or two weeks prior I may have seen those exact same leaves emit an energetic green too. 

I am currently at a crossroads. (Honestly, when am I not?) I think I’d like to see a sunset sometime, eternal pink and a quiet bloom of purple. Everyday, I miss being younger, unafraid and courageous in every aspect. I miss being unafraid of the purple. These days, I feel agonizingly cold when it’s dark, reminded of the perpetual state of being alone in such a busy world. 

I wonder if loving is an exhausting thing—people tell me that it’s not. And I guess it’s my general inexperience that makes me sound like a bitch for saying so. But I can’t help but think that loving will be my eventual demise—that it will wear me out completely, and that in the end I will be re-immersed in the purple gloom. I wonder if what I’m feeling right now is worth it.

[ifyourefree]

Fate, Plummeting and the Eventual Sorrow

Shakespeare emphasizes time in a lot of his work, the notion of being early, being late, most specifically being both early AND late at the same time. 

At first, I couldn’t understand how one can be both late and early at the same time—I kept thinking of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, his panicked yelps of “I’m late! Oh goodness, I’m late” before scampering off into the rabbit hole of the land. But I guess, the core of the tense is that it is essential to look at it from a multitude of directions. When Romeo dances with Juliet at the masquerade ball, Juliet falls in love with him. After finally realizes his true identity, she says this:

“My only love sprung from my only hate, / Too early seen unknown, and known too late! / That I must love a loathed enemy” (1.5).

And what that means is that it’s too early for these feelings of passion and affection to occur—they had literally just met—, and yet, it’s too late in that the feelings have already engrained themselves into both characters, despite them being enemies. And that’s another division too, that Romeo is her one love, sprouted from her one enemy, the Montagues. And yet, it’s fate for these divisions to occur, and fate yet again when Romeo is too early,,,or at least the letter of their plan of escape is too late, which leads to both lovers’ collective demise: death. 

I think about contrast, divisions, chasms in themes a lot these days, not just loving and losing, but early and late, forever and never, how I find myself either plummeting or rising, and how sometimes it all feels the same. Each day is quite eventful and I find it easy to laugh, and yet when I have nothing to do, I am quiet and reflective. I overthink the silence and wonder if I’m doing anything correctly, if it is right for me to plummet, if plummeting will get me anywhere. 

When is the perfect sweet spot? I feel like I keep missing it, and apparently being early and late never means anything good. 

On another note, I’ve been re-reading Human Acts by Han Kang and it’s got me wrapped around its spine. It’s horrifying really, the details and the actual Gwangju Uprising, the murders of people young and old (but especially young teens, college students). The translated version I read in Korea is more rich, I think, but this works well enough. I read the book in 30-minute increments because it’s so hard to put down, but I know that I need to savor it in order for it to fully process it. How it is fate to lose what you have yet to find.

[ifyourefree]

Refuge.

I voluntarily went to church for the first time in five years. Maybe longer, maybe shorter (I don’t really remember), but I know for sure that it’s been a while. 

I'm mostly non-religious despite being baptized as Catholic. My relationship with religion is rocky and mostly shit,,,it was a long term relationship in which I constantly felt rooted out, oftentimes “othered”, never really comfortable. I used to skip mass and hide in the bathroom, listen to the girls talk shit about me as they washed their hands in the sink. I stood in prayer and asked for God to kill me, and when he didn’t do that I hated him, cursed him, said out-of-pocket shit about him.

So I quit church. And I never looked back. But sometimes, I felt like it would’ve been nice if I had something or someone to turn to when I felt especially lost. It would’ve been nice to be able to wholeheartedly believe that some force or energy could watch over my actions and guide me from evil. But then I would think about my experiences in the church and I would continue to stride forward. 

I joked about attending mass today just to get a free donut. That’s why I found myself up in the morning and hurriedly throwing on an outfit and sipping half of my iced coffee. Poured the other half down the sink. I wore a crop top and my roommate shook her head at me.

I walked in and the feelings of insecurity weighed on me again, and so I sat in the pews. Didn’t close my eyes in prayer, and didn’t raise my hands in worship. I accepted the “bread” and didn’t eat it. It’s sitting on my nightstand right now. The lady who gave it to me held it up stating it as “the body of Christ” and I looked in her eyes for a second and then evaded her gaze with a slight bow, fearing that the blue of them could see right through me.

The choir sings a song about seeking refuge in God and I internally sink. I think of leaving mid-sermon. A baby fusses and whines and cries and I feel my eye twitch and my fingers curl. 

But towards the end of the service, I smelled my grandmother. It’s not something I can associate with something else as a smell, because it’s not a specific shampoo or air freshener. But it feels like a certain temperature of chill, a stillness, and too quiet. It seeped into the air suddenly, and I quickly found my eyes watering. 

At the time, the guy on my right was sniffling and rubbing his eyes aggressively, and I had been sneaking glances at him before it happened. Internally chuckling at how he was so moved to tears after a quick sermon. But I realize that it was probably less about the sermon that brought him to tears, but more of his own personal emotions or troubles. I stared at the twin candles and willed myself to breathe. I wondered if it was because there were so many old people surrounding me—if it was the smell of age and experience. But there was no mistaking that I had smelled this before. 

It was my grandmother’s scent, the scent of her in that sad retirement home in Lomita. It was the smell of the jewelry I never got to touch nor keep, the smell of the couch with the plastic seat cover, the smell of the weeds that never seemed to grow but continued to live in the pot she kept by the windowsill. Until she died. 

And no one was there for her when it happened. I was in Korea, we all were. I thought of how she would spend the entirety of our monthly meetings lecturing me on my looks, but would spend a half hour waving us goodbye in the parking lot, waving waving waving at the empty parking spot we had occupied. I used to stick my hands out of the window and wave back, wave wave wave hoping that the silhouette of my hands would be visible in the back window. 

In the pews, I imagined her body in the box. Cold, hard, the leather of her face molten freeze in the underground. The bones of her legs, I thought about how her veins were an artificial blue stemming all over. The boxes and boxes of protein shakes, my dad sitting on his knees and crying… I debated on telling him about her sudden “appearance” in the church, but I think doing so would put him in a downwards spiral. 

I wondered if she smelled like that when she was in hospice care, her bed posted under the window so that the sunlight would stream in. I haven’t prayed since my father accused me of not praying in high school. I looped my fingers together and hoped that she was doing alright up there. I wondered if coming to church today was the right thing to do, that she would be happy since she was a devout Catholic when she was alive, only leaving the house to attend church and praying at her homemade altar. 

Although I know that it’s going to be another while before I step foot in church again, I think today went well enough. I plan to visit grandma’s grave again next time I go home, maybe make her a bouquet by hand and write her a letter.