And this is where I am.

I'm afraid of running out of things to say.

You and I, we talk long, write long. We're the ones who have to go back and cut. We're the ones spilling over, excessive, caught with threads of words spilling out of our shoes as we trample word limits and talk over the beeps on voicemail recordings.

There is always something to say in my house. Something to argue, contest, observe. Somebody with unfinished questions and somebody else with half-completed answers. Silence is a prelude to a story. In my house, we like to test people with questions, we like putting people on the spot. In my house, we talk to strangers. We tell people when we recognize them from Girl Scout trainings, the car mechanic's parking lot. We tell people when we want something from them. We say what we want to say when it needs to be said. We protest things. We march for things. We shout things. We argue on purpose.

You and I, we always have something to say. You can find me in the stacks of old journals stored in shoeboxes in my closet. I can find you in those journals, in the green journal we shared. You and I, we wanted records of what we had to say. Look: almost six years later, we're so much the same.

And yet, I think my greatest fear is that someday, I won't have anything to say. I think my greatest fear is that someday, I'll get lost in things - looming due dates, the right shade of foundation, shaky grade point averages, choosing a major, weekend plans. I'm afraid I'll stop discovering new music, picking poems to recite, looking for resolution, telling stories, listening. I'm afraid I'll stop writing.

I'm afraid of not finding joy in hectic academic schedules, unexpected smiles, difficult readings, cold creek water, Pablo Neruda's twenty love poems, differentiable equations and integration, the smoky smell of camping tents and stars, seminars, chocolate, the best of professors, long phone conversations, new people, Mexican markets, the smoggy sunsets from the hills of Los Angeles, digging for sand crabs at the ocean, uncontrollable laughter, the hardest yoga poses, the desert, museums, Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, sadness. I'm afraid of the day I stop finding joy in sadness.

So every day is a postponement of that day. My journals, my poems, my conversations with you, my conversations with others, this blog - they are all postponements of that day. And this is where I am.