In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

I want this. I want you. Simple. Terrible. Complicated. True.

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.

Sometimes it feels like fate is telling me where to go. Like the universe flashes for just a moment— Pay attention. This one’s important. Don’t lose this. And I am telling it, I’m trying. I’m trying every way I can to keep it, and to keep it right.

Haven’t you noticed? You win me every time.

You don’t ever think too hard about should or shouldn’t, or the right thing to say. You just say what you mean. I like it.

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.

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.

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.

When it came to loving you, it was fact. There was never a decision at all.

Sometimes I think I made you up inside my head. Sometimes I think I spent so long hoping for someone like you that I willed you into my life. Sometimes I think I did enough good things that the universe decided to surprise me.

It’s a risk to love. I would know, I spent a lot of years not taking it.

I always felt endings rise up to smack me in the face before I could even take one step into the future.

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.