“I like sleeping with you, so I guess I could love you.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“What?”
“You can’t love someone just like that.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t make sense, you can’t just make yourself love someone. Love isn’t just something you make yourself do. You feel it, you don’t just evoke it out of nowhere.”
“You can will anything.”
You’re sitting an arm’s length away, your fingertips gripped tight around the steering wheel and your eyes on the limitless stretch of road. I can see the muscle in your jaw, tense and tight, your teeth pressing into each other to keep the words in between your tongue and palate. My fingers have been buried in my lap for fifteen minutes or so, caught between my thighs because their fidgeting was starting to make us both nervous. I open my lips, a small sliver that makes my breath sound faintly like the noise of wind escaping a cave—hollow and slithering like the letter s. I catch myself and shut my mouth, though not at tensely as you.
“I told you what I wanted,” is the first slew of words you utter, defense and accusation all laced together into one quick sentence. There is a sense of pride to your tone, pride and admonishment that are firmly pointed at me. I retreat into myself, I start fidgeting again and I’m running my finger over the car window switch, pulling it just enough to make it move but not far enough to make the glass roll down. For a moment, all thoughts escape me as I imagine the window cracking open just an inch and sucking all the air right out of the car like a vacuum. In my trance, we shrivel up like slacks of skin without bones or blood or fluid or muscle. We are just the old skin that’s been keeping us together, limp and empty balloons of what we used to be.
“Are you going to say something?”
I’m brought back to reality, my fingertip lets go of the window switch and goes back to the restraints of my thighs. Suddenly, the car feels tense and warm, maybe it’s all those emotions in me rousing from their deadened state and I need the air conditioning, something, anything, to keep me from sweating through my shirt. I turn it on, the cold air hits my cheeks just in time for you to flip the air back off. You’re cold, you’d rather keep the air off.
“No,” is that first, hot word—one little syllable of a word, a little fragment made from my teeth and tongue and throat. How weird, for a little jagged bit of breath to be packed with such weight and gust. We are quiet again, you won’t pry because you’ve said all you’ve needed to say—you are innocent after all, you had told me what you wanted from the beginning.
Up ahead a sign reads a city name and number, soon we’ll be there and we’ll sit quietly in the car pulled into my driveway. You’ll wait a few minutes to see if I’ve got anything else brewing inside me, any more screams or taunts, anything else to make this more muddled than it already is. I’ll wait for an apology, it won’t come, and after six or seven minutes I’ll get out of the car without looking back. As for now, I’ve never felt lonelier and more afraid in such an enclosed space. I’ve always felt hopeless and uncomfortable around you in a weird way—like you loved me but were I to disappear one day, you wouldn’t worry yourself with a search. Once, you whispered a promise to me from across a pillowcase, your hands resting on my bare lower back while you silenced my fear of dying in my apartment without anybody knowing. You said you would know, you said you would never let that happen.
You’re an arm’s length away, and the loneliness I feel makes a pressure between my two ears strong enough for me to need them to pop. I don’t pop them, I let the pressure build until the world sounds muffled and there is a dull ache. You say something inaudible, we’re in my driveway and I hadn’t even noticed. My ears pop now that the car isn’t moving anymore—I get out and don’t turn back.
I miss you, I said, I hurt without you. These words, they quivered off of my lip, like some small trembling gift that only you could have. The dead air made me nervous, but you told me that I was your heart. And I promised to never stop beating for you.
I miss the person who makes me feel like everything in this world is okay.
There is nothing poetic and eloquent needed here; just you to make me feel right again.
Red, sticky lips, all scraped-up and stinging from the pricks of your five o’clock shadow. The skin around my mouth is swollen and red from your teeth and chin, my body is covered in your fingerprints and scratched up from your nails; but I’m not complaining.
I want you, and I miss the feeling of you digging into me.
Though the night was cold, we were two matchsticks making a fire; keeping each other warm in the sounds of the wild.
My mom asked me to dye her hair.
I’ve done this a few times before, coating her skin with vaseline and then dipping my fingers into that viscous, purple lotion. When she’d wash it away, her brown hair would be dark purple or chocolate, and then I’d comb her hair until she looked like she was fresh from the salon. We’d repeat this every four months or so, covering up the dullness—as she’d call it—of her natural hair with some shiny, fresh color. She’d look so beautiful, vibrant colors against clean, olive skin. When we’d go out as a family, I envied her burgundy lipsticks matched against a shade of brown, be it Rich Medium Gold Brown or Ebony Mocha or Eggplant Brown. She was gorgeous in her colors, all accents to her engaging and warm spirit.
Tonight, when I split her hair to dye a half-inch from her roots, her hair is a palette of gray that I’m to stain with youthful color. I used to herald my mom an ageless, timeless beauty, but when I see the those white hairs intermingled in with her ‘dull’ natural brown, I’m reminded of life’s uncertainties. There is fear in my throat, in my stomach, it shakes in my hands and I think about the day when one day I will be covering up my own grays and my mother will be just a memory to hold on to. Time is slipping by, one day we will all creak and crack and try to force our youth while slowly crumbling into dust.
I slather on the dye thick, in twenty minutes my mom looks youth and fresh again, there is no gray on her head and she’s powdered away her crows feet. There is a moment of relief where I want to believe that we’ll never be apart in the span of my life, but every time I close my eyes I see seconds turning into birthdays and funerals.
We dug our fingertips into the earth, into crumbled soft in our paws like fresh chocolate cake. Kneeling side by side, I felt the muscles of your arms against mine as we dug a perfect hole of parted dirt and root. When the time came, you spoke the word and I let out one long breath. Picking up the small box, I closed my eyes and spoke a few small promises. As seconds grew into minutes of silence, you reached over to awaken me, holding my wrist with a big warm hand while a single tear slid down and hung from my chin. Kissing away the sadness on my face, you pressed your lips to the box and we set it inside the earth. Together, we used our open palms to bury away our little secret. We pushed and pushed until it was concealed, entombed in the place where we are all born and die. I felt my heartbeat slow as a heaviness was pulled from the small of my back. This new space inside me was filled with the warmth of the sky opening up and the fall leaves rustling in the wild around us.
I am a frantic lover: jealous, possessive, with a mouthful of regret. I split my time obsessing, chewing my lips raw, and biting my nails.
That’s all.
Sometimes, when I can’t find that comfort of sleep, I dream wide awake of you. There are so many little things to build a dream with, but mostly it all comes back to that day where we walked down to the river in the late afternoon. We kicked off our shoes and walked around in wet grass, letting the soles of our feet turn green and the cracks between our toes fill up with dirt. We laid down, the prickling of grass on the napes of our necks, and we watched as the blue sky turned into this tableau by which we painted our stories. Hands up against clouds and blue, you drew up your life between airplanes and the sliver of moon far on the horizons. I laughed and kissed that spot below your ear, and you let go of all those deep things held deep in your chest. In the calm of that afternoon, I closed my eyes and your hand up kneaded away into the small of my back. Later on, we found our way back to your apartment and peeled off our clothes, our feet left footprints on your sheets and I woke up the next morning with a blade of grass still stuck to the back of my neck.
Sometimes, when I wake up after spending hours dozing, I still feel you whispering your secrets against my earlobe. I reach for a blade of grass stuck to my damp skin and find myself rubbing away at nothing but a small memory of you.