Today you are going to pick up your only winter jacket from Hers. On the train you are shaking. You pick up a large bottle of Zinfandel at the liquor store down her street and spend $10 that you don’t really have. You walk up to her street. Four boys and an older woman (mother, landlord?) crowd a portion of the sidewalk. You brush past on the gravel, almost slipping. A form that strongly resembles hers is in the driveway; your heart threatens to leave your chest. This walk is eerily familiar to you. Music is crowding your thoughts and you slip out of your headphones, unsteadily approaching the porch. You sit. She is moving her car so her roommate can go out. You don’t know what to do.
She says “what’s up” like you’ve seen her do to people she doesn’t know very well but wants to flirt with and her eyes betray no warm recognition like they used to. She asks if you should come in?
I just picked up liquor, I can share it with you if you want to have a drink, you say. There’s no way that your nerves are going to steady themselves on their own.
I don’t know, we’ll see. Cross the threshold. Door closes behind you. You are trapped now. You knew this would happen. You want to go upstairs, up to her room, climb the familiar steps and strip naked, settle in your niche in the bed like you’ve always done...
Bookcase isn’t where it used to be. Curtains are different, or new. Couch is ratty as ever. You remember the nights you used to spend making food in her kitchen, nursing her stomachaches on the couch watching ****** TV and laughing in each other’s eyes during the commercials. Breaking each other’s molds and melting away from the rest of the world.
Did she fix the window from where that guy tried to break in last semester?
No. The curtains are just new.
Oh, nice.
Drink?
Definitely.
You’re handed a pumpkin-flavored hard cider and this relaxes you a little, because you’ve always felt cooler than you actually are when you’ve got a bottle to gesticulate with while you’re talking to someone. It’s really just a mask for social anxiety, a cute 8oz bottle of conversation lubricant. Apply as needed. Consult a doctor for intense pain lasting more than four hours.
You two try and talk. She asks why. You can’t speak. After a few minutes of holding up, you fold, crumple.
Hoarse, tense. Your throat is burning and she isn’t doing anything as your knuckles around your knees wrench up your jeans and turn white telling her about how Heather died and how Chickee is in the hospital and just had a seizure from the meds they were using to keep her from dying of pneumonia and now she’s lost whatever precious vestiges of memory were left and remembers nothing at all and you’ve been fighting daily to keep your mind from running away from you, doing this all on top of work and courses is stringing you out so thin can’t she see that you just wanted you to have time to take care of yourself holy **** -
I know you hate me now I know and I’m never going to escape the hurt I caused you because it feels to you that I just left but I didn’t ever want to leave it just had to happen
We see relationships from two different vantage points
((Did she **** her neighbor))
Why are you on a dating site
It’s a tool you’re using to force yourself back into social interactions but it's also a necessary evil. There aren’t too many queer women to find anywhere but the internet anyway, they’re all in hiding during the day in a batcave or something -
Why did you leave me
You never thought it’d get like this
Coward
Leaving after you tell her to ******* because she asks you to, walking out with my things onto the porch and a cigarette in your mouth desperate to inhale something that’s toxic as if the carcinogens will take effect right there and you’ll drop dead of all kinds of diseases in the middle of her walkway
She comes outside with letter keep this read it you’re not going to like it but it’s all I’ve got for you and it’s what I’ve wanted to say
You don’t want it, you say, you don’t need this cancer sitting on your desk and silently invading your life
******* take it
You stand in the street reading the letter and it’s all about how she thinks you’re some heinous ******* who just left her and took the easy way out when things got difficult.
Maybe you did, you’re a nihilist, you don’t think there’s a point to anything and you do like things when they’re easy for you, it hurts less that way- but doesn’t everybody?
People who say they’re saints are lying to themselves.
Another compilation excerpt. Written October 2015.