Creatures

by Crissy Van Meter

not practical for anyone with an itch. She describes her life like this itch—she must go where the wind takes her.

that his eyes were closed, and that sometimes, loneliness can make a heart stop.

There’s so much pressure that your heart can explode.

When she went away, I learned this pressure, the weight inside my chest. There was the pressure of missing things, the leaving of things, the invisible weight that felt so thick, even when everything was still moving. She taught me the constant foreboding of implosion.

But there must be paths to those places unknown, she said. Told me to keep searching. Searching in complete darkness.

Because what else do you say to a father you are fathering?

Why is it believed that, like humans, humpbacks can feel emotions?

He will ask if you’ve ever been in love, to which you’ll reply: How should I know?

Can love evaporate?

There was something about all her fucked-up-ness, always on display, that made me want to wear mine, too.

wasn’t a kid, but we both had to be kids to survive.

The kind of mammal who can’t even articulate emptiness.

You’ll ask your father if it’s okay to be that lonely, and he’ll say something like: She’s not lonely down there.

As long as you have yourself, you’ll always have me, and everything else.

The things that broke us: the harshness of the earth, and love.

and I scream that I can’t fix his heart if he doesn’t believe his is beating.

Life forms from nothing. • Aristotle: Life arises out of nonliving organic material, miraculously.

What does it mean to love other people, each other, ourselves? • Is it possible to love everything at once, and sometimes love nothing, too?

And I can’t bear the thought of loving him anymore. Each day, the burden of that brokenness feels bigger.

“But there are so many people who love you.”

“I’m no good at love,” I say. “Me neither,” he says.

Me explaining the growing of roses is me explaining that it’s like the cycle of a woman—all her waiting, and watching, and sprouting, and dying.

I really want to say: I’m ready now to love you forever, even though I’d already promised that.

What if loving them didn’t make me miserable? What if I was happy even if nothing would be perfect.

Everything can kill you, is what he’s saying, but you won’t be listening. He’s telling you he hopes you’ll be wild enough to love things you cannot see.