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.

I wanted you to look, and you did.

I think how ironic it is that I’m twenty-four in another state with my own apartment and I’m standing here like this with you. Maybe history repeats. But if it does it’s getting better.

But your cheek was against my heart and all I could think was how I wanted you to be okay.

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.

You feel like something I could count on.

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.

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.

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.

We should’ve come with a warning.

All of my greatest creations, at least, every true good thing I’ve ever come by has started with me just wanting to help my friend.

Four years of imagining a hand on my waist and envying every lingering glance between strangers, and now you, bigger and better than anything I could’ve thought 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.

Happiness is bigger and better with you.

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.

I hope to know you as well as you’d like to be known.

And you and my idea of you— well they might just be the same guy. I’ve never seen them in the same room at the same time, at least. You’ve never proved me otherwise.

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.