In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

You have this way of looking at me that stops my heart; it is the way, I think, I’ve always dreamed of being looked at. Like I hurt your eyes a little. Like you can’t believe your luck to be standing in front of me.

And we laugh and it’s easy and sometimes it’s too easy and something outside of us comes along to make it hard. And then, even then, with us sitting sad and broken it is easy. It is easy to go through something hard with you. I think that could be the beginnings of something like love.

And I’m scared of that and how good it feels and how badly it could go but I’m not scared of you, more of how much I want it. How it’s been dormant in me for so long and then I see your face and I want it all; more nights out with drinks and me hanging on your arm, more mornings where you roll over and pull me into you, more of all of it and longer lasting and maybe even a guarantee, something I could count on. You feel like something I could count on.

You are waiting on the edge of my mind every morning when I wake up, ready to be thought about. You are never far from me.

And it feels like you were waiting on the edge of my life for so long, little glimmers of a person I could get along with, a person I wanted to be around, waiting until I was ready. You were never far from me.

You are my deja-vu. An echo of the person I had imagined for myself. Will he be kind? Yes. Will he be smart? More than most and as much as you. And will he listen, will he understand me, will he know? Yes and yes and to a fault— and best of all, he will be better than your imaginings. There are things, little girl, that you cannot dream up.

And I am a person whole, long before you. I am a person whole without you. But I think the tiniest part of me will be suspended, waiting. There is the tiniest corner of life that won’t feel right until you’re back again.

And that night alone in my bed I cry for the third time, the last time. Not for the absence of you or the fear of what I’ve learned, but for the girl who used to fall asleep alone. Who taught herself how and did so perfectly happily for years, and undid it all in a few months for a boy who changed her mind. I cried for her, the loss of her, and the realization that I hope she never has to come back.

And then you loved me. And I knew you did long before. But knowing and hearing it were entirely different. And I was made different, made better, by you.

Sometimes it feels too good to be true. It feels like we’re making all this up. Happiness is bigger and better with you. I guess that’s just love when it’s good.

And that is what it’s like to be loved by you. I am exceptional, even when I’m awful. I am happy even when I’m sad.

But the decision to love you? It burst one day, instantaneous, fully formed, into my consciousness. When it came to loving you, it was fact. There was never a decision at all.

I discover myself the more I’m with you. And I think I fell in love with me, too. You lit the path and I simply followed. You took my hand and led me through a gallery: Things That Are Amazing About Me. I learned myself the way I would a stranger. You showed me things I had always possessed but overlooked.

I am living my life by a strong use of the word almost. I am almost everything; almost better, almost happy, almost where I want to be.