Almost Again.

I’ve always loved watching a movie the second time.
The first time, I’m too tightly wound,
tense with questions,
chasing plot points, missing joy.
But the second time, I breathe.
I notice the music,
the way the light falls on someone’s face,
the way it all makes sense.

Maybe that’s just me.
I bloom in the repeat.

And maybe that’s why life feels so cruel sometimes,
because I only get to live it once.
No rewatch, no rewind.
Just a single, unblinking run.

But oh, how I’d love a second showing.
To go to UW again,
scribble half-legible notes filled with arrows and half-thoughts,
stay up late working through assignments,
wrestle with questions that didn’t have easy answers,
barely sleeping but somehow more alive than ever.
To show up early for the classes I loved,
and rush in late to the ones I didn’t.
And if I could write those application essays again,
about why UW, why data science,
I’d have a very different answer now.
One shaped not by hope or ambition,
but by the quiet certainty of having lived it.

To sleep in Seattle
while the rain turned windows into lullabies,
soft and steady like the city was humming me to rest.
Some nights, it felt like even time slowed down,
just enough for me to breathe.

To walk to Sakuma in the middle of the night,
not because I needed anything,
but because it was quiet there,
open sky and water stretching out in front of me,
where I always sat without my glasses
and the lights across the lake shimmered and blurred,
soft and dreamlike,
as if the whole world had exhaled,
and I didn’t need to see it clearly to feel at peace.

To cook that perfect, chaotic meal with friends,
spices everywhere, someone always chopping too slow,
and someone else singing off-key.
And then looking up what to watch
while the food got cold,
only to end up playing something we’d already seen,
because some stories feel better the second time.

There are days I wish life was a loop,
so I could savor what I rushed through,
dance slower where I once stumbled,
say yes more boldly,
say thank you more often.

But life…
life is stubbornly linear.
It doesn’t care that I’m better at second chances.
It only lets me love things once,
and asks me to love them well.

And so I try to notice now,
the way this moment might glow
if I ever got to see it again.