In Tongues

by Thomas Grattan

wishing I didn’t cry so easily, wondering if there would ever be a time when the biggest thing in my life wasn’t difficulty. My self-pity was large then, though maybe it was fear, the call and response of those two feelings so seamless it was difficult to distinguish follower and leader.

and I fought the burying worry that I was just like him.

loving someone meant to also see the ways they were pathetic and small.

I wanted someone with my genes out in the world, scared and mean and miserly in the way I can be, though I try and remind myself that I also experience moments, even now, of such joy that I cry or laugh or have to walk for hours to manage its electricity.

“Greg does have to stay,” I said. “This is his form of employment.”

“I might want to paint you,” Pavel said.

But being in his orbit felt like a drug both expensive and hard to find. I chided myself for thinking I could have him, afraid, too, that I was close to something I wanted a great deal, and might not get.

aloof charm started to sour.

though I wanted to be wrong, for his fascination to hold as I moved from novel to ordinary.

I’d flipped between the shock of being dropped and the surprise that he’d ever been interested.

I’d long put my money on a world I imagined rather than the one that existed.

a sweetness turned bitter when what I’d wanted and gotten started to retreat from me.

There are times I lull myself with hope even when the evidence points in failure’s direction.

Now he’d changed his mind. People were always changing their minds.

One of the benefits of aging, I suppose, is to know that most feelings aren’t permanent fixtures.