breathing air forgotten since

Sometimes I just lose touch, forget to update, forget to keep track in the virtual place that I will look back on later. And I also forget to be present in moments, get caught up in tasks, in normal days that will fade and become gilded with gold when I look back at the memories.

But here are some tangible memories from last year, when we spent months on end living in Notting Hill, feeling the ache of cold floors in our bones, getting to know the people of Portobello Road and naming them as our friends.

you know when you come home

I visited my parents for an extended period last summer, and when I returned to my home and community life, I felt the oddest whispers of nostalgia as we were doing things that I thought I would remember forever.

But I developed this roll of film yesterday and found the photographs that I took over the past year, and I realised I'd forgotten so many of these moments.

I must be living a life where timeless has a new meaning, where moments that define home and hope and safety are becoming commonplace for me. There are still things I yearn for, and it is good to have dreams, but there is also such peace in knowing that there is home.

the voices in the morning

There are voices I love to hear in the morning, and fall asleep to as they murmur along with the constant London rain, my family across the ocean. There aren't words to describe the way these fingers and toes and livers and spleens have wriggled their way into my heart.

fresh breaths

In the exact moment that I needed a fresh breath, an escape, my best friend's parents claimed me as their own and whisked me away to a city stuck in time, streets I'd read about, a day without having to face the pain.

(Bath, UK, and London, England)

English Christmas

This year, I was welcomed into my friend's family for Christmas, and I spent a week completely submerged in English culture. It was interesting, and completely odd, to be a part of a family that is a counterpart to my life thousands of miles away.