Worry

by Alexandra Tanner

As I fall asleep, I’m jealous that Poppy can articulate such a clear, raw vision of want, that she can fantasize so deeply. Every time I think of something I want I manage to talk myself out of it. I close my eyes and tell myself to think hard about my deepest wish for my future life. I tell myself it’s okay to imagine; that I’m safe inside my own head; that I can get specific; that my desires are worth considering. Before I know it, it’s morning, and I don’t remember dreaming of anything.

I backspace and backspace, knowing Leigh doesn’t want to hear it all anyway. Instead I write, lets get together soon!!!!! and Leigh writes, absolutement!!!!!! for drinks and treats!!!!!! and I say, yes please!!!! knowing we won’t make a plan, we won’t see each other for months, we won’t reveal ourselves to each other; I will look back on this one day as a moment in which I inched myself one step closer to total loneliness: to exactly what I was afraid of the whole time.

“I’m really doom-pilled right now. I don’t like myself. I don’t like anything. I don’t like my body, I don’t like what I eat, I don’t like buying things, I don’t like reading things, I don’t like working, I don’t like writing, I don’t like New York, I don’t like it here—” “You have to stop,” Poppy says. “You’re out of control. Are you feeling too sad?” Across the street, someone’s getting proposed to near the Lululemon. “Like that,” I say. “Don’t you hate that? Doesn’t that make you wanna—wanna just freak out?” Poppy looks at the engaged couple. The girl is holding one hand over her mouth and looking at the other hand, the hand that now has on it a glinting ring I can see all the way from where I sit, while her boyfriend photographs her. “I feel nothing about that,” Poppy says. “They seem happy. I’d love to be that happy.” My tongue feels like it’s swelling.