The Other Side of Disappearing

by Kate Clayborn

Instincts without experience, one of my professors once said to me, were a liability.

for a split second, a second that might be imperceptible to everyone on this front stoop but me—she looks as if she might cry. My chest aches.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a face like hers—it’s like looking through a window at a storm.

How it feels to have Adam Hawkins see it all, when I think he can see right through me.

As if I could take this punch for the woman standing next to me.

the only thing I seem able to think about is the man standing beside me, and all the things he’s done for me in the moments since I first saw it.

I suspect I might beg her with my eyes for the hand-holding thing.

Because I’m pretty sure that being near him is good for me.

I don’t want to know you for the story. I want to know you for myself.”

and then I’m a beating heart on legs, unimaginably worse off than I was before I heard her, saw her like this. If she goes now, I doubt I’ll ever recover.

Ask me, I think. Please, please ask me.

“I want these two fucking days,” he says.

To crawl into his lap and tuck my entire self into the ledge his body makes for me.

tell me you don’t remember how it’s always felt between you and me.”

I’m not really mad at her. I miss her. I fucking love her. I never even got to say it.