What It's Like in Words: A Novel

by Eliza Moss

We hadn’t used words to define our relationship, but his directness was a comfort; he wasn’t the sort of person to be anywhere he didn’t want to be. If he didn’t want to be at the party, he would leave; if he didn’t want to be with me, he would leave me. But still, the words would be nice.

I didn’t know anything about the other girls he had been with, but I wanted to be different. If they found him a nightmare, then I would understand him.

But it was a different kind of happiness, the kind that made me question if I had ever been happy before. And it meant more, I thought, that we were people to whom happiness didn’t come easily.

I didn’t recognize myself, but I still felt seen.

I would have cut my own arm so that he could heal the wound.

I wanted to sink into his body as if it were a favorite chair.

I had never felt sexy before, but I believed him because, at this point, I was what he told me.

I couldn’t have known, but that was what retrospect did to memory: warped it and turned it sepia.

He wasn’t saying it in words, but he was saying it in something like them: he wanted that too.

He would rub my hip bones, and I would feel delicate and lovable.

because being with you is like carrying something fragile.

If universes sprout from moments of indecision, then I have created hundreds.