In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

And there was a very long pause and a very charged moment where I thought you might kiss me but you didn’t and I was relieved and a little disappointed.

I placed a hand to your cheek and it felt like the strongest pull and the widest gap and the closest friend.

This is not normal, I think. It is not normal to look at you like this and feel this pulling in my gut, a heartbeat of Future Future Future.

And there was you, last night, with tears rimming your red red eyes and you were in so much pain over someone else’s pain and it was gorgeous to look at and sent a knife into my gut at the same time. I felt the part where I should tip— get pissy or get hurt, but it didn’t come. Instead I placed your head on my chest and held it tight. I thought, I am lucky to be the one who holds you through this. I thought, I will be whatever you need. Why didn’t it hurt more? I am so used to the hurt. But your cheek was against my heart and all I could think was how I wanted you to be okay. That is no small thing.

Are you my future or her past?

I am tipsy and blissful and safe. I am barely twenty-five.

It was nighttime in the living room; I couldn’t fall asleep, And it felt too good to keep secret… But there are secrets good to keep.

But they were only thoughts, I barely spent any time with them. Only thoughts— The way every good thing on earth has started.

And your things are in my room. Your pillow on my bed, your shampoo in my shower, your keyboard in my living room. Traces of you everywhere, a map leading right to me.

And I am risking everything or almost everything, but it feels worth it. Your things in my room feel normal. No twist ending. I think I like my chances.

“Thanks for talking, Dom.” “Yeah, anytime. Literally. Ever.”

(I want you more than I can stand.)

But I saw when you set me down: my heart stayed in your hands.

And it’s scary but it’s not, because I have a feeling. A good one, like this might just work out. What that means exactly I don’t know, and I don’t like to think too hard about it, either.

You just say what you mean. I like it.

I like when we’re at the store and everyone notices.

your hand closes around my shoulder in a way that feels like I am both mine and yours, and I’ve never felt that before. I’ve never felt it before. It’s exactly my life the way I wanted it but now you’re here.

I like the way you make me feel, and the way you make me think. You like the way my face lights up when I tell you all about the things I believe in. You like believing, just a little, too.

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. You’ll find them sitting right in front of you at twenty-five.

And it was your pain I was focused on— I can’t believe you’re choosing to think of me at all.

I trust you to come back.

And the fear, the fear: I could get used to you.

I carried you in my pocket, brought your voice with me from room to room. We talked as I locked my car, cleaned my bedroom, did my makeup, ate lunch, fell asleep. That was how it started. And how it ends might be another story. (The story might be that there is no story there at all.)

I have grown used to you.

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 I don’t mind it. You hear that, world? Change all you want. I don’t mind.

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.

I’m not one to be frightened of a feeling.

I can still remember you the way I saw you when you were just my friend. A person to be admired from afar, a person to gravitate toward at a party. The time in my life when I hoped I got to sit next to you and nothing more.

There is a simple magic in being someone’s friend first. It comes along with a simple hurt. I can remember the distance long before it ached. Even now I think, how could I stand it? How could I be in a room with you and feel anything else?

There is a simplicity to it. And a terrible, deep, complexity. There is invariably more to lose. But there we sat, in front of everything we had to gain. How can you make a decision like that? Slowly? Or entirely at once?

I was hesitant and worried and constantly weighing our risks versus our rewards.

I’m still not one hundred percent certain that you’re entirely real.

Maybe love is just wanting to be known. That’s how I realized I loved you.

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.

the cadence all your jokes come packaged in,

At the front of my brain is a big welcome sign: Now entering my mind. Your thoughts, always welcome. Come back anytime.

But I feel it; the possibility of change. Everything is almost different, but it’s me who makes the final push. 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.