an essay

“If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we

don’t. We keep our skulls. So.” -Annie Dillard “Living Like Weasels”

Can you love someone - completely - without choking up a part of yourself to them?

We tend to do that; scatter fragments of our lives like mirror shards, waiting for something to

stick.

A list of the pieces I’m missing (I’m forgetful) :

The imprint of my hips.

The red from my cheeks.

The plans I shed when I thought we’d continue.

The worn page of a poem, my favorite one, the one that makes me cry.

Only me.

The time it takes to say your name, when I’m so sure it hurts.

We yield concretely. Things to be held, caressed, inhaled, and choked on. Tangible items, fair and

understood.

I like the control of this certainty.

That your mattress must release, exhaling my body into dust.

That, surely, you would have stumbled across that poem online, without me.

That I wouldn’t have time anyways. I can make myself busy.

Still, giving never comes easily. Vacancy often holds the most pain. But even so, we retain the

critical idea of retrieving ourselves. The possibility of shaping those pieces back into some harmless

thing.

Funny. I just noticed. You have the same name as a kid I went to preschool with. I haven’t

seen him since.

He means nothing to me.

But the thing that no one wants to give is an admission. The small part of yourself that says,

quietly,

the only thing I want

is to feel the silence of your lips on mine.

I’ve never wanted that from someone before. It’s terrifying.

It lies beneath your tongue, perpetually making an attempt upwards. Recoiling, eventually, at the

tired space between your mouth and theirs.

What were you thinking that made you pause?

Were your thoughts racing, banging at your head.

I remember feeling dizzy.

Or were they still? Unmoved.

Were you

even thinking at all?

The danger is never knowing whether your impact on them amounts to anything as

the bony ache in my throat. Reaching

for the empty sigh

at a question.

I’m reminded of religion. Reverence to a higher power. Faith requires letting yourself fall into the

unknown, loosening your bones down towards the racing air. This necessity is selfless in some ways and

pure for it. Cleansing and soft. The softening of a grip you’d use to hold a throat. Another soft thing

is me. You knew and held me gently, till it wasn’t right. Then you let me go, laid me to sink into the

cold, wet marble of the bathroom floor. Pressing my pale cheek into my phone, I let the small part

of me come all the way up and rest on the idea of your lips on the line. I listened to myself say it,

the bare question,

“Do you feel that way about me?”

Which sounded more like a statement, a demand.

“I need you to.”

The worst is unrequited need.

I smashed your voice, the soft sound of sorry, into the receiver. The phone’s temple bled with a

monotone ring.

Need persists. It writhes to stay beating. Hope beats like a heaving heart.

My chest hurts. I think I’m sick so I hang myself over the toilet, the smell of bleach. I shutter from

the inside but nothing comes out. I’ve lost it.

The gutted admission lies on a bed of weeds, the waste of you, reaching towards their mucky feet.

You’ve been treading. I can feel your footprints on my chest every time we cross paths, every time

you cross my mind.

My ribs, they’ve gone warm now, painfully so. The soreness of longing, of stretching out my core

to you,

holds me.

It’s nice. I like to believe it's you.