wings

"One day I am gonna grow wings / A chemical reaction."
— "Let Down," Radiohead

She looks over at him and says. “Close your eyes, spin around, and whatever direction you’re pointing, go.”

He looks back at her and, despite being comfortable against the tree stump, he obliges. He gets up, spins around, and points. They’re in the woods, so the direction doesn’t mean anything to him, but he watches her hold her phone toward his finger, the compass app open on the screen. She swallows hard.

“West,” she says, and leaves it at that.

It’s three p.m. in California, six p.m. here, and that crushes her for some reason. Not being in the same time zone as certain people makes her feel dizzy. Time being relevant and all that.

The sun is still warm on her skin, and they both fall into that place where they’re half awake, half dreaming, where floating feels like something attainable in this life. She dreams of sitting in the backseat of his car, her feet pulled up beneath her, her head resting against the headrest. In this dream state she wonders what it all means, but knows she won’t find the answer at the end of a blunt or the bottom of a bottle. Even if she did, she wouldn’t listen to it anyway.

She always gets a little restless come Fridays. She misses people she shouldn’t and craves drinks and dinner and long talks on a patio, the sound of crickets and someone absentmindedly flicking a lighter on and off luring her into a trance.

She has energy built up, ready to be spent.

Despite being in the woods, she can hear the motorbikes on the highway swerving through traffic like they don’t have family waiting at home. Maybe they don’t, but we all come from somewhere. Whether we’re proud of it or not, none of us were born out of thin air.

Now flags whip in the wind, and lake water sprays into her eyelashes. She’s no longer in the woods or in a car, but on a boat. She blinks the water from her eyes and remembers the summers they all spent at the lake, drunk on the sun and life and each other.

Every time she opens Instagram she sees engagements, weddings, baby announcements, and she feels detached from these worlds people have found themselves in. She’s happy for them in a different sort of way. There’s a slight tang of jealousy, but an even greater sense of relief.

He shakes her awake, the sun now dipping below the tree line. They both walk back in silence, buzzing at their fingertips and toes, sleep still hanging around the corners of their eyes.

She thinks to herself that despite the gray outlines of her life, grief, sorrow, depression, the center is bright, expanding past its borders. She feels her chest blooming with warmth, as though something behind her ribs has finally remembered how to grow.

---

Buy me a coffee for my birthday

Thank you all for your endless support of Hannah Writes. I published my first post in April 2025, and I feel so grateful to have been writing here for over a year now. Along the way, I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful friends, mutuals, and subscribers, and that has been one of the greatest gifts of this little corner of the internet.

Today I turn 26, which I’m choosing to feel optimistic about rather than worried. It sounds old when I say it to my fifteen-year-old cousin, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m still quite young.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my words, support my writing, and maybe even buy me a coffee. It means more to me than you know.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

With so much gratitude,

Hannah Writes