Jul 2020
"If I'm still single by the time I get my first grey hair, I'm marrying you."
When it’s morning and I’m sober and rummaging through my bedside table for painkillers, I’ll wonder how you didn’t take offence at that.
So inconsiderate and foolish and deluded.
You smile like you know something I don't—a language I understand but can't speak, a puzzle I can figure out only when you point out where to start.
"What makes you think I'll be available by then? That I won't already have a dog and a white picket fence with someone else?,” you say.
"Oh, I'll just show up at your door one day, all sad and alone and holding up a single grey hair, and you'll feel so much pity that you'll leave everything behind to run away with me.
And we'll get one of those dogs you love
(a Beagle, you say)
and we'll go to that one country you like—
awfully cold, no fun, city names with fifteen letters,
(Iceland, you say)
and you'll be the one to break us up when I become too much,"
and you laugh,
and (you say, the only reason
I would dump you
is because you smoke like a chimney,
and I'm not marrying into tobacco-smelling rugs and lung cancer at forty two)
So I tell you I quit, pinky-swear on it,
and when you make a face in disbelief,
I take out the last pack of cigarrettes
sitting in the back of my trousers
and toss them from the balcony we stand in,
watching them rain down on the sidewalk
in some sort of dramatic, contaminating declaration of devotion.
When I find the painkillers and I'm back in bed, I'll wonder why I can't remember the rest of the night.
Maybe it couldn't hold a candle to the way you looked when I promised you my own version of a white picket fence.
You walk in after work
to see me sitting in your kitchen floor,
neck craned up,
staring at a cookie tray as it cools down,
and I wait and make a list in my head
of all the reasons why you will finally snap:
1) I used the emergency key you gave me
2) and let myself in with no warning
3) to use your stove and your pantry
4) and I'm inconsiderate and foolish and deluded,
but you drop your bag by the door,
toe off your shoes on the hall,
and take a seat next to me
to watch the steam rise from every cookie at once.
“I can’t have a family.”
“Oh, well… We could always adopt.”
“No, I mean—I can’t have a family. Just can’t.”
I tell you it’s not too late yet, you know? You can still take off your ring and leave—it would break my heart, but I’d get it.
When we're back at the hotel and I'm clear-minded and you're rubbing my shoulder in that spot you know is always tense, I'll wonder how I can be so self-centered.
I made you love me, promised you bureaucracy and an after party and a possible forever, and then I tell you the thing you've wanted your entire life is the one thing I can't get myself to give to you.
“You promised me a Beagle, remember?”
(I did, I say)
“So, how about we start there?”
And in our hotel room, when you press down exactly in the right place, I'll look at you as a bead of sweat rolls down your neck and I’ll think we’re young. We know time passes, but we are yet to find out time weights.
"Dog it is, then"
And it is.
And I’ll wonder how I didn’t realize before what you've really wanted all along.
I try to go about it in different ways.
Once, I read you Siken before bed,
and I take my time when I tell you love always wakes up the dragon,
and when I look up from the page I expect you to say it,
(You're the dragon, you should say)
but all I see is you frowning, pointing at a line you want me to go over,
and I once again say,
Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
No one will ever want to sleep with you.
The pity in the white of your eyes makes my head spin,
and I wonder how you can feel compassion for the inconsiderate and the foolish and the deluded.
And then it hits me.
And then I pity myself too.
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
"Then everything that can, will," you say, and you hold my hand.
I don't think that's how it works.
"Us. We can," you go on.
And I wonder what you'll do if our carpet ever smells of smoke or we never adopt that dog.
"Then we will," I say.
And somehow, we do.
When it’s morning and I’m sober and rummaging through my bedside table for painkillers, I’ll wonder how you didn’t take offence at that.
So inconsiderate and foolish and deluded.
You smile like you know something I don't—a language I understand but can't speak, a puzzle I can figure out only when you point out where to start.
"What makes you think I'll be available by then? That I won't already have a dog and a white picket fence with someone else?,” you say.
"Oh, I'll just show up at your door one day, all sad and alone and holding up a single grey hair, and you'll feel so much pity that you'll leave everything behind to run away with me.
And we'll get one of those dogs you love
(a Beagle, you say)
and we'll go to that one country you like—
awfully cold, no fun, city names with fifteen letters,
(Iceland, you say)
and you'll be the one to break us up when I become too much,"
and you laugh,
and (you say, the only reason
I would dump you
is because you smoke like a chimney,
and I'm not marrying into tobacco-smelling rugs and lung cancer at forty two)
So I tell you I quit, pinky-swear on it,
and when you make a face in disbelief,
I take out the last pack of cigarrettes
sitting in the back of my trousers
and toss them from the balcony we stand in,
watching them rain down on the sidewalk
in some sort of dramatic, contaminating declaration of devotion.
When I find the painkillers and I'm back in bed, I'll wonder why I can't remember the rest of the night.
Maybe it couldn't hold a candle to the way you looked when I promised you my own version of a white picket fence.
You walk in after work
to see me sitting in your kitchen floor,
neck craned up,
staring at a cookie tray as it cools down,
and I wait and make a list in my head
of all the reasons why you will finally snap:
1) I used the emergency key you gave me
2) and let myself in with no warning
3) to use your stove and your pantry
4) and I'm inconsiderate and foolish and deluded,
but you drop your bag by the door,
toe off your shoes on the hall,
and take a seat next to me
to watch the steam rise from every cookie at once.
“I can’t have a family.”
“Oh, well… We could always adopt.”
“No, I mean—I can’t have a family. Just can’t.”
I tell you it’s not too late yet, you know? You can still take off your ring and leave—it would break my heart, but I’d get it.
When we're back at the hotel and I'm clear-minded and you're rubbing my shoulder in that spot you know is always tense, I'll wonder how I can be so self-centered.
I made you love me, promised you bureaucracy and an after party and a possible forever, and then I tell you the thing you've wanted your entire life is the one thing I can't get myself to give to you.
“You promised me a Beagle, remember?”
(I did, I say)
“So, how about we start there?”
And in our hotel room, when you press down exactly in the right place, I'll look at you as a bead of sweat rolls down your neck and I’ll think we’re young. We know time passes, but we are yet to find out time weights.
"Dog it is, then"
And it is.
And I’ll wonder how I didn’t realize before what you've really wanted all along.
I try to go about it in different ways.
Once, I read you Siken before bed,
and I take my time when I tell you love always wakes up the dragon,
and when I look up from the page I expect you to say it,
(You're the dragon, you should say)
but all I see is you frowning, pointing at a line you want me to go over,
and I once again say,
Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
No one will ever want to sleep with you.
The pity in the white of your eyes makes my head spin,
and I wonder how you can feel compassion for the inconsiderate and the foolish and the deluded.
And then it hits me.
And then I pity myself too.
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
"Then everything that can, will," you say, and you hold my hand.
I don't think that's how it works.
"Us. We can," you go on.
And I wonder what you'll do if our carpet ever smells of smoke or we never adopt that dog.
"Then we will," I say.
And somehow, we do.
