In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

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.

You feel like a book I read a long time ago— learning you is like remembering something I’d seen written. Your thoughts spill onto me like a dog eared page or an underlined paragraph. Familiar but slightly surprising all the time. You open your arms to me and I think, I have been here before. This is safe.

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.

The decision to kiss you came to me slowly, over a matter of weeks. The decision we should be together, even slower. I was hesitant and worried and constantly weighing our risks versus our rewards. It took months before I could call you my boyfriend without clapping my hand over my mouth right after I said it, as if some huge secret had spilled out. 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.