Slanting Towards the Sea

by Lidija Hilje

I can’t remember the last time someone said I had potential. But the thing about potential is that it doesn’t go away. If you fail to realize it, you don’t simply lose it. Instead, it sediments inside you, like tar or asbestos, slowly releasing its poison.

Feeling in constant pain is actually quite common, among highly intelligent people.

cried because I was only nineteen and I was already so tired of carrying around that jagged grain of loneliness on the inside that always threatened to cut me if I made a wrong turn. I cried because I had all this love inside me, and it had nowhere to go.

“Yeah,” he said. “Back home, all things slant towards the sea.” He took my hands and rubbed them between his palms. “Your hands are cold,” he said as if this had surprised him, and then he leaned in to kiss me. And when he did, something inside me reoriented itself, my world softly tipping into his direction, as if he himself were the sea.

I envisioned a different kind of love, one that was gentle and kind. Words like thank you and bless you, and what

is it you need, its main discourse. A space to rest, reposeful and calm with someone lying right there beside me, equally serene. Someone who sees inside me in a way that makes me translucent; who lets me see inside them too, all the way down to their deepest, most intimate core. Someone who yields to me, surrenders into my hands, while also offering themselves as a cocoon in return.

We share a secret, Frana and I. She is the only person who knows the real reason why I left Vlaho all those years ago, the truth not even Vlaho knows, and I’m the only one who knows the role she played in it. We’re each other’s liability, and even though we’re

both best served not talking about it, we act as if the other one is a loaded gun about to go off.

for one to know what they want to be, they first need to know who they are.

I’m back to wanting to slam the phone down like in the old days. Poking a finger onto the screen doesn’t feel like much of a statement.

If people want to love you, they do, no matter how flawed you are. But if they aren’t inclined to love you, nothing you say or do, no amount of your own goodness, can make them change their mind.

Far from sight, far from heart, my mom always said.

The thing about feeling too much is that sometimes you have to force yourself to feel less. That in order to preserve your heart, you have to close it off,

deliberately deny it its main function, and reduce it to a mere pump.

Because even conceding to someone else’s wishes, giving in to meet someone else’s needs—even sacrificing yourself—is a choice.

Because I’m always like this. Overthinking. Overfeeling. Overreacting. I’m an uncovered nerve and everything touches me, everything causes me pain. Even pleasure does. Even love.

He was uncharted territory then, one I felt insecure treading, but now I’m approaching him like a place I’ve been to dozens of times on vacation. Not quite mine, but familiar, with a bit of shared history between us.

August has a melancholy to it, like a party that’s dying down, and you’re torn between wanting it to last a bit longer and itching to go home and curl up under a blanket.

It’s not enough anymore. Now that I’ve had a full-sized bite, now that the juices of that love have trickled down my throat and mouth as I bit into its tender flesh, my fingers sticky with it, my palate dancing with its taste, my heart thundering to the joy of it, I am ravenous. I want more. I cannot subsist on crumbs anymore. I need it all. I need all of him, or I’ll die.

Around us, the sea, the rocky, bare island, the endless skies, sounds of nothing. We are alone in the universe. I close my eyes to keep the world out. There’s only us, this feeling of coming back home.

The world had put too much on me and I didn’t know how to carry it. I didn’t know how to occupy space, to ask for what I needed any more than he did. But that was a long time ago. I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’m asking now, I want to tell him. I’m asking now.

Because, we don’t set boundaries most easily with strangers or those who mistreat us. We set them with those who make us feel loved and safe, who hold space for us to admit our needs and limits, even when they’re the ones paying the price for it.

Other times, a photo of a note, scribbled in his slanted handwriting. The same handwriting I remember from the Post-its he used to leave all over our home. A note that talks of longing. Of homesickness too, for home is not a place, it’s a person. A story intended for one, viewed only by one. My world tipping ever so slightly in his direction, as it always does.