there was always that sense of something hovering just out of reach—the life you imagined, flickering faintly at the edges like a mazzy star song. the low hum of coffeeshop chatter, the clatter of chipped espresso cups, the smell of patchouli and cigarettes—it all hinted at a world just beyond your grasp... a world where they read proust and carried the golden notebook, not as text but as artifact, a fragment of something more abstract—proof, perhaps, of a life imagined. it wasn’t about being seen, not really… but about lingering at the edges of being seen, wrapped in well-worn moleskin jackets and thrifted flannel, a kind of armor against a future that always seemed to stall.

we lived in that liminal space, doc martens scuffing the pavement outside record stores, voices rising and falling like guitar strings, strummed half-heartedly on dorm room floors. we believed, always, that one day we’d slip into that life effortlessly, like a pair of broken-in levi’s. after graduation, the city waited... a place where everything would finally make sense. lofts and late nights would become the backdrop to our new selves.

but it was always an illusion, wasn’t it? a life that was only ever an echo... fading into the silence of unread pages and unplayed mixtapes. or maybe we knew, even then, how it would all end up... and that’s why we clung to it. why we still do.