Read this on Substack.

At the very top is a pinned note
“things i love”
which contains for myself the reminders
of the things I love, including 
(but not limited to)
giving my friends nicknames, 
when I find a good song after a musical dry spell,
and getting my eyebrows done. 

This is the messiest, truest
representation, illustration, reproduction of my mind, I think. 
Snippets of error messages on code that won’t compile,
snippets of text messages I have sent 
to boyfriends that stopped being boyfriends. A 
hundred notes that are titled 
“hi” and “hiii” and “hello”. 

A single treasure trove with scans of 
my passport, my driver’s license, my debit card pin.
Unsecure, perhaps, but 
far from my most insecure, that is contained in 
the documentation of the days I have been sad, 
disappointed in myself, my family, my friends.

The physical manifestation of my mind,
captured in my favorite quotes from all the books 
that I’ve read, recently, it was from The Namesake. 
My new year’s resolutions and six month resolutions, 
reminders in big bold text on stuff 
to take from home to school and from school back home. 

Sometimes, on planes and also on days
when I want to remind myself of who I was, 
I leaf through this library of my mind, 
marvel at how much has changed, how 
my sorrows from back then have faded, 
how I have never gone to the gym four times a week,
but my friends stayed my friends, 
my family stayed my family.
I persisted.

I find, also, that with all that has changed, 
at the top, the things I once loved, 
I love them still. 

It is good to feel this permanence, when I know my mind 
is young and fickle, probably. I have my notes app, 
I have the “things i love”.

---

This is a poem I wrote for my creative writing class—my first ode.