The Words We Left Behind

A sample of The Words We Left Behind

The Words We Left Behind

Callie Byrnes

Copyright © 2024 Callie Byrnes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written consent and permission from Thought Catalog.

Published by Thought Catalog Books, an imprint of Thought Catalog, a digital magazine owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Co. Inc., an independent media organization founded in 2010 and based in the United States of America. For stocking inquiries, contact stockists@shopcatalog.com.

Produced by Chris Lavergne and Noelle Beams
Art direction and design by KJ Parish
Creative editorial direction by Brianna Wiest
Circulation management by Isidoros Karamitopoulos

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First Edition, Limited Edition Pressing
Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-949759-81-5

Words left behind

• Acatalepsy — 7
• Adumbrate — 9
• Albatross — 12
• Aquiver — 15
• Arcane — 16
• Askew — 18
• Aurora — 20
• Beleaguer — 21
• Bewitch — 22
• Bombinate — 23
• Brontide — 24
• Cadence — 25
• Cataclysm — 26
• Chiaroscuro — 28
• Chimerical — 30
• Circumstantial — 33
• Clandestine — 34
• Comestible — 36
• Coruscate — 37
• Crescendo — 39
• Cynosure — 42
• Dalliance — 43
• Denouement — 46
• Desuetude — 47
• Diaphanous — 49
• Duende — 51
• Dulcet — 54
• Effervescence — 55
• Efflorescence — 58
• Elegy — 59
• Elixir — 62
• Elysian — 65
• Ennui — 66
• Ensorcell — 67
• Ephemeral — 68
• Epoch — 69
• Estivate — 70
• Esurient — 74
• Ethereal — 75
• Evanescent — 78
• Exalt — 80
• Frore — 82
• Gloaming — 83
• Halcyon — 85
• Heliotropism — 87
• Hyperbole — 89
• Hypnagogic — 91
• Imbroglio — 92
• Ineffable — 93
• Infatuated — 97
• Ingénue — 100
• Insouciance — 101
• Inure — 103
• Irenic — 104
• Labyrinthine — 105
• Lachrymose — 106
• Lacuna — 107
• Languish — 110
• Lilt — 111
• Lycanthrope — 114
• Mackle — 116
• Mellifluous — 117
• Moiety — 119
• Moxie — 122
• Nebulous — 126
• Nepenthe — 128
• Niveous — 130
• Noctuary — 132
• Oblivion — 134
• Offing — 136
• Orphic — 140
• Panacea — 142
• Panoply — 144
• Paramnesia — 147
• Pelagic — 148
• Penitence — 152
• Penumbra — 153
• Peregrination — 155
• Petrichor — 156
• Phantasm — 158
• Phosphene — 160
• Phosphorescence — 161
• Pluviophile — 163
• Propinquity — 165
• Pyrrhic — 166
• Quietus — 168
• Quintessence — 170
• Quixotic — 173
• Quotidian — 174
• Rantipole — 175
• Redolent — 176
• Residuum — 179
• Resplendent — 180
• Rutilant — 182
• Saccharine — 184
• Sanguine — 185
• Saudade — 189
• Scintilla — 191
• Sempiternal — 192
• Serendipity — 194
• Sillage — 196
• Solivagant — 197
• Somnambulist — 198
• Sonorous — 199
• Supine — 200
• Syzygy — 203
• Tender — 204
• Tintinnabulation — 205
• Travail — 206
• Unmoored — 207
• Vacillate — 209
• Verklempt — 210
• Vertigo — 211
• Vestigial — 213
• Whelve — 214
• Whimsical — 216
• Wistful — 218
• Woebegone — 220
• Yearning — 222
• Zephyr — 223

To everyone who finds themselves in the margins of this book: Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry.

Acatalepsy

(n.) real or apparent impossibility of arriving at certain knowledge or full comprehension

WE STAND SIDE-BY-SIDE on a clear night, so close that if I were to reach out, my knuckles would graze yours. I try to connect the stars with my line of sight while you paint pictures with the smoke that drifts from your long, thin fingers.

I tell you about how I wanted to be an astronomer once, how I used to stargaze from my grandmother’s countryside patio and draw the sky on the back of receipts. I tell you about my family. I tell you that sometimes I can’t make sense of the world no matter how hard I try, that my thoughts don’t seem to connect and neither does anything else in life. Sometimes I feel as disjointed as every pinpoint in the night sky.

But then there is you, with your cigarette lips that smile ever so slightly when I speak, with your eyes that follow my line of thought like it’s the red string that will lead us out of this maze. You make me feel less alone in all this empty atmosphere because I am used to being lost in my thoughts, but you remind me what it’s like to be found.

"Why astronomy?" you ask, long after I’ve forgotten what I was saying.

I tug at the hem of my dress and shrug, suddenly shy, as if I’ve been ousted from the darkness, no longer able to hide behind the night. Your attention has always been a spotlight I crave until it leaves me feeling exposed.

"Because I want to understand it," I say eventually.

Because I want to understand the vastness of it all, or maybe just my smallness. Because I want to understand if there are dead ends or if there are some things that really exist in forevers. Because I want to understand the things that have existed long before me and that will continue long after me, too. But maybe what I really mean is that I want to understand my place in it all—or maybe just that I want it all to understand me.

I can tell from the tilt of your smile that you’ve already anticipated the words on the tip of my tongue, connecting the dots of my thoughts effortlessly, and it’s only then that I finally understand why I stopped looking for answers in the stars.

Adumbrate

(v.) to foreshadow vaguely

THE MAZE OF THE MUSEUM has become the backdrop of this budding friendship, though none of the paintings interest me quite like you do. We pause to read the placards on the wall, but really we are reading each other—our reactions, the details we linger on and those we choose to leave behind. We tell our stories in the context of the art surrounding us.

Our lives have been colored in so differently, but here we start to see the bigger picture: the still life of a fruit bowl becomes the thick Midwestern summers spent eating wild strawberries straight from the vine with my father. The painting of Mary holding baby Jesus becomes the walls of the church where you spent every Sunday morning growing up, the one that taught you about faith. Under the bright fluorescent lighting, we admire every brushstroke of the past that we paint for the other.

Halfway through the exhibits, we step out into the garden for a break and find a bench that allows us to sit, turned, face-to-face. You tell me about how it’s beautiful here but sometimes you still miss your hometown, so I ask, "Why did your family decide to move, anyway?"

You look up at the foamy clouds floating above us as if you’ll find the reason hidden somewhere in the steam. "In those last few months there, we were all really struggling," you admit. "My mom prayed about it a lot. One day, when she was mowing the lawn, she said to God, ‘If you show me three white feathers by the time I’m done, I’ll know it’s a sign.’”

I wait for you to continue the story, but you just stare up at the sky, content. "And?" I prompt.

You grin wryly, though I’m not entirely sure it’s meant for me. "She found three exactly, and we started packing the next day. Now every time I see a white feather, I know I’m on the right path."

My first reaction is to wonder why anyone would let something so small impact such a big decision, because I may count on flower petals and make wishes on the numbers on the clock, but I’ve never believed in anything strongly enough to imagine such an act of faith—not a deity, not a theory, not even myself. I want to ask you if you ever questioned it, if there was ever even an inkling of doubt that seeped in, but I already see the answer in your smile.

"Let’s go back inside," you say suddenly, hoisting yourself onto your feet and holding out a hand to help me to my own. "I want to see what else is here."

As we approach the doors leading back into the museum, you come to a sudden halt. I look at you, confused, then follow your line of sight to the cement path before us, where one small white feather rests on the threshold.

"See?" you say, your eyes crinkling in the corners as they meet the surprise in mine. "We’re exactly where we’re meant to be."

And there is something in your conviction that makes me believe it, too.

Albatross

(n.) something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety; something that greatly hinders accomplishment

THE FIRST TIME I SAW YOU after you broke my heart, I was with the boy who made me laugh the way you did. We were getting ice cream at the parlor you promised we’d try that he now brought me to all the time. We were standing in line, pointing out our favorite flavors through the freezer window, when I noticed you sitting on a bench from the corner of my eye. I spent the whole hour trying not to look toward the edge of the room you haunted because, in the early days of mourning you, the only way I knew how to handle the grief was to not acknowledge it at all.

The second time I saw you after you broke my heart, I was with the boy whose words upended me because they were the exact ones you’d said to me first. I always tried to discount the similarities, telling myself that even stuck in this cycle, I could find a way to make it all work, but then I walked into that coffee shop years after we’d both moved away from it and there you were. Though I sat with him on the other side of the room, my eyes kept drifting over to you, if only because I couldn’t believe the odds that in trying to escape my past, I once again found myself barreling right back toward it. When we finally left, letting the glass door shut definitively behind us, I told myself I wouldn’t look back.

The last time I saw you after you broke my heart, I was with the boy whose openness reminded me of why I’d once been so drawn to you. Maybe that’s why I found it so hard to trust him. I never could figure out what was more terrifying: the thought of keeping myself so closed off to the possibilities that I missed them completely or the idea of opening myself up to them, only to realize I’d never quite escaped the labyrinth I entered the day I met you. After months of holding myself back, I was finally ready to let him in, but then I looked up to see you standing a few yards in front of us, your silhouette a stop sign that halted me in my tracks. As I watched you disappear around the corner, I felt a tug on all those stitches that held me together, as if you’d plucked the end of the string and pulled it along with you, leaving me to unravel.

There’s a cruelty to our fate, I realize now—because I am destined to lose you, I am destined to be lost,

The available excerpt ends here, partway through “Albatross.”