Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

Take two people with a mutual willingness to connect, convince them to expose their innermost thoughts, and presto: true love.

Billie was beautiful, with the kind of unforgettable face you see in old movies—a study in dark and light, pale skin and black eyes, an elfin chin and freckled cheekbones—and she was also an aspiring artist, which of course thrilled me. Four years older than me, she possessed a worldliness that I aspired to. But what I loved most about Billie was her capacity for joy, her fearless abandon.

“Do you like things the way they are? Because if you do, by all means, carry on. But if you don’t, nothing’s going to change until you decide to make it change.”

Maybe this is why they say love is blind: Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are.

He wonders now if marriage is about balancing on that fragile intersection between the said and the unsaid, sharing just enough to satisfy the need for intimacy without crossing over into dangerous territory. Shoving everything else under the rug, hoping it doesn’t accrue high enough to trip you up.