it’s tuesday and we’re drunk anyway and our ankles are in the pond and my back is flat against the dock and you are looking down at me while i tell you sad things. i close my eyes and spill out secrets because once they rise in me i can’t stop them until they bubble past my teeth.
“it happened,” i say, “and then it kept happening.” i find a laugh in my chest where i know there shouldn’t be. sometimes i pretend i’m an anchor because there’s a difference between sinking and drowning. i peek one eye open to you, where you’re frowning.
you don’t say anything. i worry i’ve gone too far. told you too much, and now you’ll see i’m a project and you’ll leave. you’ll untie the boat. you’ll leave me stranded in the storm. all that cliche shit everybody writes about but hurts worse than words know. because people leave, and leave, and leave, you know?
“it’s good!” i blurt, because i can’t stand the silence, i sit up quickly, i splash my feet, i pull funny like a blanket up and around me, “shit happens. what doesn’t kill me made me a bitch on wheels.” and shit happens. it happens until it crawls down your throat and just when it would be better to die, you get a breath in instead of choke. shit happens and you wake up and it happens and you go to sleep and it feels like the same shit, all grey and ugly and the underbelly of the beast, shit happens but you can’t talk about it because otherwise, people know, and you can’t show other people you’re weak.
but you’re not laughing. i ruined whatever we have. your lips twist to the side. i try untalking, unmaking the mistake, coiling back up all the useless garbage about my dumb life which isn’t even that bad, i’m just whiny. “i’m good now,” i say, “i’m okay,” i say, “it sucked at the time but now im fine,” and i say it, because the lie feels right, but i hate the way your face looks, like you’re trying to see under my skin, like now that you know you can’t un-know. like you’ve solved the problem and the equation reveals that i’m a piece of shit.
“i’m sorry,” you say instead. “that shouldn’t have happened.”
i bark a laugh, try to talk, but you shake your head. cut me off. “no,” you say, “i’m here if you ever want to talk.” you keep searching with those wide eyes so i gotta look anywhere else, anywhere else, down to the fish and the water, down and down, away from the only thing i haven’t figured out how to laugh about, away from the glow of you and the warmth that radiates now, away from this terrible truth you’re weaving between us, “i love you,” you say, “i’m glad it didn’t kill you but it shouldn’t have happened that way.”
oh no. oh god. oh god, wouldn’t it have just been easier if you had waved it all off. can’t we just make a joke and move along. oh god, oh no, not this, not love. i can’t handle it. i’m not strong enough.
“i love you,” you repeat while i’m stifling a sob. you put one hand out on my shoulder. i want to cut my own hands off. “what happened to you,” you say, and it sounds like an alarm, “was terrible, and you didn’t deserve it, and it was entirely wrong.”
i don’t know how to handle this. i don’t know where to go if you’re telling me i don’t deserve it when the crumbling hits. i don’t know what to do but buckle down and survive it. because what comes next if you’re right. what if you don’t leave my side. what if i wake up one day and shit happened again just as it started to all go right. what if i wake up and the truth is that i did nothing to deserve this shitty old life.
“it’s okay,” you say. “you’re going to be alright.”
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if you had stayed. What art we would have on the walls - yours and mine overlapping, photos of each other blurry and laughing. How many plants we would have let overcrowd our floor, how many poems i’d read to make you sleepy, how many breakfasts we would spend saying “after this we go right back to bed.” We were always trying to make the other person laugh but I picture more often just how you’d look in my kitchen, stirring a coffee and humming tunelessly. Maybe we would spend every Friday dancing. Maybe you’d have taught me embroidery or how to sing and I’d have shown you waltzing. Maybe we would have a dog or a cat or an engagement ring. Maybe we would have a secret stash of your favorite candy. Maybe you would have loved my mom and maybe she would have said you were good for me.
walk home, girl. she don’t love you, she’s using your blood to dye her coat and call her body sour. yes she has the prettiest eyes you’ve ever been caught in. yes when she talks you feel like the whole world shrinks to a single pin centered on her lips.
but she’s gonna wake up and pat the hangover outta her pink cheeks and never call you back. she’s gonna tell her boyfriend that the party was fun but towards the end it got boring. she’s gonna sit in his lap and play with his hair like she plays with your heart and she’ll tell him she saw you but it was kind of awkward.
go home, girl. saddle the sorrow and write a poem and cry about it when nobody is looking. don’t think about how she sounded when she said i hate how much i want this. don’t think about how she murmured while nibbling on your throat: if i left him, i’d be yours. don’t think about how she felt under your hands and under the trees and under the stars and under your skin and under you again, sighing over and over again i missed you like a prayer she was chanting, and you a cathedral fountain, and you with bent knees and worship, and you trembling to hold and behold her, pressing your fingers into her spine, trying to sort nerves from bible passages, trying to cleave where holy and hell lie twisted, trying to sip from a wine cup you already knew was poisoned.
when you wake up there won’t be a note. when you wake up your hands will be empty and there will be a stone in your throat. when you wake up and you will wake up, it will be an empty morning and you’ll know when you close your eyes that you have built your bed and your heart and your altar in her wandering bones. when you wake up, your first thought will be i want to go home.
she’s his, and she’s his, and she’s his.
but you’re hers. and when you wake up there’s nowhere to go.
we fell together so easily was all. like you belonged against me. i don’t usually trust people like that. i don’t usually let people near me. something about you was a soft spot, an opening. i don’t know if i believe in soul mates. but i know how i feel around you.
It is so strangely empty to give up on somebody. You’ve done the fighting and the screaming, the whispered practiced speeches you said in the mirror and the crying in public places. the attempts at logic, the subtle sideways begging. And you sit in your cooling car or in the library or on the train and you realize - that was actually it, wasn’t it. It’s not worth it anymore. The remains of your relationship have been ashes for so long now - why are you still trying to call the fire department. Why are you doing this. You never walk out without shaking, and they always walk out having said the last word and struck the last blow.
And you think: when did it happen? When did I grow up more than you did? When did you stop trying to be a better person? Why wasn’t I good enough to keep in your life? Were you ever listening? Did you ever care what was going on with me? Was I just around because then you’d have somebody on your side? Why are you like this? Why? Why? Why?
I wanted cutting it off to be cathartic. It was instead kicking a winter beehive. Nothing but a cold sting inside.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
