A cover of Passenger's Let Her Go—by a girl who has a squeaky voice—plays overhead. We were looking for beef backbones to make pho beef broth from scratch. But now, we stand in the checkout of a Chinese supermarket, and my vision is the best that it's been since about a year. Clear, omniscient, as I take the stiff frames out of their Hugo Boss case, and they encase the lenses recording my life. Should I have picked the better fitting—but less appealing—choice? I wonder this as I notice that the glasses don't quite fit right. The frames of my old glasses were always flush with my sideburns, but these frames are wider.
I've been wearing my old frames for about four years now. Those frames were one of the few things that stayed consistent throughout the last four years: graduating my undergrad and master's, now taking on a PhD. A journey across a pond. A lukewarm dumpster fire of a relationship that wasn't meant to last. An on-and-off relationship with the world ending in front of my eyes. And despite the green patina of atacamite encrusting those old frames, the chloride came from sweat, not tears.
"Per—sim—ons", an old Caucasian lady with a foreign accent asks a store employee. Even my hearing has clarity today, as I direct her to the persimmons because the combination of accent and mask obscures their communication.
Where was I? Right—soul searching and binge-watching Netflix. My top songs on Spotify are all from a now-deleted playlist. This past year has been one hell of a quarter-life crisis.
Even though my eyes are worse than they were four years ago, I've somehow gained much clarity since then. We are creatures of habit, yet what we want will always be greener than what we already have.
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