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. “Please stop that,” I say, and it is the first and only time I lie to you. Please don’t ever stop. I want to be looked at by you until the sun goes down.

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 warm and you smell like a campfire, all dust and flame and bug spray. 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.

Back at the beginning you told me, this is either everything or almost everything. It was in response to some fear or another— I am quick to point out that we’re all either going to break up or die. I tend to get attached.

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.

At the tip of all my memories here is my loneliness, from a girl who wished to never be alone.

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. Something big is coming, and it could be good or it could be bad. To me that is the same as hope.