ANNIVERSARY
I stick my thumb out and demand a ride. It’s our anniversary. Of the day we died in our last lives. I want to celebrate with you—catch up over coffee, then find a room to catch up on all things pent up.
I pray whoever just complied with the thumb’s demand isn’t a creep. I point every few streets, he turns as I direct, until we are forty-five minutes away from where he meant to end up.
We start pulling through what looks like our old town, and I see what looks like our favorite café: same beaten-up exterior, same yellow walls. I don’t know why I remember so much, or why I was stuck remembering if I wasn’t given the power to find you.
I start crying. The driver doesn’t interrupt, just rolls down my window, puts on a song. When he drops me, he tells me, “I’m sorry, whatever it is, I’m sorry.” I tell him, “Thank you,” before shutting the door.
Everywhere I go I do not know what I will find, but I cry just in case it’s still not you, all over again.
WHEN I SAY LONELINESS
I’m at a restaurant. The walls are white, the
lighting fluorescent. The waiter is glued
to the kitchen, barely checks in. To my right,
there are stacks of unused chairs. I counted
them: fourteen. The fly in my soup gets lodged
in my throat, and is humming along to the
Lucy Dacus song playing in my ears. When
the waiter makes his way back over, I ask for
another of the exact same thing, and swallow
it down fast so that the fly can have someone
to talk to. He buzzes as if to say thank you, and
I breathe as if to say I know what it’s like.
ART + PAIN > NO PAIN, NO ART
I say look ma, I made art,
and her eyes fall to the ground.
The vase she dropped only a moment ago
Is now enhanced in its beauty by some pinecones
I found in our backyard and some flowers I picked
From the front. She says that’s great, hon, but the
Shards will still make your feet bleed, and proceeds
to sweep away all my goddamned work.
PSYCHIC
The psychic folds over a card and leaves me to stare at it.
She carefully chooses one that says I will die in the near
future. I reach for the dictionary to define “near” but she
slams her hand against the book and holds tight—I can’t
slide it out from under her. She gets up to fix me tea. She
even tells me to take my coat off, she’ll wash it for me.
She says she wants to spend some time together, make
a day of it. She says we don’t have much time. I reach
again for the book for a definition of “much.” And I guess
she doesn’t trust me anymore; she throws the book into
the fire across the street that wasn’t there when she
started to toss, but I guess she saw it coming. I have
checklists of what I want to feel before dropping dead, and if I’m
low on time, I need someone who’s going to do all the
work, make me feel all of it at once. She tells me there’s
a man who plays guitar on the same street corner every
night, gives me the coordinates, says when he plays he looks
just as impassioned as I do when I’m hunched over sheets of
looseleaf, agonizing over words. She promises that he,
too, thinks driving into the mountains at 4:00 in the
morning is the most important thing a person could
possibly do. Sounds like my kind of guy. I get my ticket
for the subway and tell the woman, her hand on a pole,
that I have finally found something worth holding on for.
She asks me where it is, and I tell her, I don’t know—
I lost the coordinates—left the boy on the corner for
somebody else to find, because I already have it, just by
knowing it is possible. And because I know everything
I have ever wanted is out there, I don’t need it, not even
any of it! I let myself fall asleep, deciding that I’ll get off
at whichever stop I wake up. How can it be that both things
are true? I am dying, and everything is possible.
Comments