Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

This is the time in our lives we’re supposed to have complicated relationships with our bodies, but I’ve never had a reason to dislike mine. I’m small, pear-shaped, muscular. My body does what I ask it to. I respect it, push it far enough but never too far, and it rewards me with art.

“More than friends” is such an odd phrase. It seems to suggest there’s something beyond friendship that’s even better, a bliss that can be achieved only by linking hands and locking lips. It’s as though friendship isn’t enough—not when there’s the potential for “more.”

WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU THEY “need some time,” they should give you an exact date they’ll be ready to talk about whatever difficult thing they can’t talk about right now. I need some time, but let’s reconvene next Thursday at four p.m., they should say.

A first kiss in a bookstore has got to be the best kind of first kiss.

Our lives have revolved around Peter always. He is the earth, and I am the moon. There was never enough I could do to get him to love me the way I wanted, to see me as more than just a moon. I have never been enough, and he has always been too much.

And then I let go of him first, this boy who never belonged to me. I let go first.