The Other Side of Disappearing

by Kate Clayborn

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a face like hers—it’s like looking through a window at a storm. There’s rain, lightning, wind; there’re trees bending and shaking with the force of it. Part of you is glad to be separate from it. But part of you wants to press against the glass and get as close as you can.

Crying is for the shower, which is basically the unlocked pool gate of locations for having emotions. You can maintain a lot of plausible deniability about the moisture on your face in there.

Briefly, I wonder if anyone’s ever stood up in the middle of a restaurant to ask if there’s a therapist in the room.

When she raises her eyes to mine and slowly smiles back, it suddenly becomes the best date of my life, even though it is not a date at all. Her smile is the same as her condolences. Rare. Honest. Meant.

I realize, with a startling sort of clarity, that I’d cut out my own heart before I treated hers carelessly.

But after she’s tugged it over her head—even though it falls almost to her knees and she has to shove the sleeves way up—there’s no trace of a smirk, only the sense that every part of her is being pulled down by the same weight I brought her out here to escape. If anything, seeing her swamped by a piece of my clothing makes me feel worse. Everything about me is too big right now. My body, my boss, my job. Most of all, my feelings for her.

“I’m always going to have your heart, Jessie. Because you gave it to me so completely, and yours taught me how to make my own. But I think—I think I need to give yours back to you now. I think you need it, because I think it’s high time you get to share it with someone else.”

“I’m sorry,” I breathe against her neck. “I know I’m too—” “You’re not too anything. You’ve never been too anything, for me.”