the prickle behind my nose, that familiar tingle right before everything breaks open, it starts with a laugh that just keeps going, winding itself around my gut until it tangles with this whole other desperate feeling and then it's just a full-blown torrent, those tears, not even sad ones, just this release, a violent beautiful UNFURLING that leaves me drained and sparkling and vibrating from my fingertips down to my toes, a specific kind of internal tremor that feels like every memory i've ever had just woke up and started stretching, a strange mix of 'yes, this is it' and a tiny, almost imperceptible twinge of 'oh, there it is again,' that fleeting moment of seeing the humor in everything crumbling, but then the vulnerability of it all just washes over, that familiar sense of relief and disappointment all at once, like finally catching your breath after holding it for too long, but then realizing you don't even know what to breathe for now, just this big, bewildering expanse opening up inside, and beans is just looking at me with those giant green eyes, totally unbothered, while my whole inner landscape shifts with the tides.