life

Tag: dailyprompt-1888

  • The Shape of Almost

    Two lines, side by side—
    Always closer,
    Never close.

    The Streetlamp and the Stray

    There’s a streetlamp near my apartment. It buzzes faintly at night like an old man muttering to himself. Below it, a cat sits—always the same one, I think. Black fur, white paws, like gloves she’s grown into.

    Every night I bring food. Every night she watches from a distance. She never runs, but never comes close. Her eyes are steady, measuring, as if some invisible line keeps us apart.

    I know that line.

    The Equation That Haunts

    We learned about asymptotes in school. Curves that approach a line forever, getting closer and closer—but never touching.

    At the time, it felt abstract. Another thing to memorize. But years later, in late-night silences and words that almost meant something, I finally understood.

    Love can be asymptotic. So can healing. So can the person you thought you’d become by now.

    You move forward. They move forward.
    Closer.
    But the gap remains.

    What We Reach For, and What We Don’t

    • There are people you will almost forgive.
    • Places you will almost feel at home in.
    • Dreams that will almost come true.

    And that’s not failure. That’s life.

    To love something you cannot have is not a flaw.
    To try anyway is a form of grace.

    Lessons from the Line That Never Touches

    • Not everything is meant to be reached. Some things are meant to be honored from afar.
    • The beauty of the curve is not in touching the line, but in choosing to keep approaching.
    • Almost is not emptiness. It is motion. And motion is still alive.

    The cat never eats from my hand.

    But she waits beneath the lamp, every night, and I come anyway.

    Not to catch her. Not to tame her.

    Just to show I’m still here.

    Still approaching.

    Still close.

    Even if we never touch.

  • The Horizon That Never Ends.

    A number without end—
    Chasing something just out of reach.
    Not failure. Just the limit.

    The Classroom with the Flickering Light

    I was fourteen.
    The kind of fourteen that felt older than it was—shoulders already tired, eyes already searching for something unnamed. It was winter, and the heater in our classroom made a sound like a dying radio. The math teacher, Mr. Feller, had a voice that didn’t rise or fall. Everything he said floated just above silence, like snow that never landed.

    That day, he drew a line on the board. Not a straight one, but one that curved—gently, then more gently still. He wrote above it:

    lim → ∞

    “The function gets closer and closer,” he said, tapping the chalk against the board, “but it never touches the line. It keeps going, forever approaching, but never arriving.”

    It hit me harder than it should’ve.
    Not because of math. I was average at math. But because suddenly, something inside me cracked open.

    I saw myself in that curve.

    The Curve and the Curse

    From then on, I lived my life like a limit.
    Always approaching—never arriving.
    Every goal just a fraction away. Every love just a shade off.
    I became obsessed with “almost.”

    Almost got the grade.
    Almost said what I meant.
    Almost told her I loved her before she moved away.

    That idea—of striving endlessly—became a kind of faith.
    If I could just work harder, be smarter, more charming, less afraid… maybe I’d reach it.
    Reach what?
    I never knew.
    Just… it.
    The line. The answer. The arrival.

    But it never came.

    Wabi-Sabi and the Elegance of Unfinished Things

    It took years to see it differently. To realize that maybe the lesson wasn’t about chasing forever. Maybe it was about accepting that you don’t have to touch the line to have meaning.

    There’s beauty in approaching.

    There’s grace in incompletion.

    That moment in the math classroom wasn’t a curse—it was a mirror. A truth wrapped in symbols and chalk dust. That our lives, like that curve, don’t need to end in perfect symmetry. They only need to bend toward something honest.

    Lessons from the Curve

    • Not all destinations need arrival. The motion is enough.
    • Perfection is not the point. Direction is.
    • Sometimes the closest we get is the most we need.
    • The line wasn’t the goal. The curve was.
    • And maybe, just maybe—lim → ∞ is not a warning. It’s a gift.

    I still think about that lesson sometimes,
    when I’m reaching for something I can’t name,
    or standing at the edge of a feeling I can’t describe.

    It comforts me,
    that curve.

    Still bending.
    Still beautiful.
    Still becoming.