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 want to be looked at by you until the sun goes down.

“What are you doing to me?” you say, “you know I’ll go wherever you ask me to.”

You were in my orbit long before I felt the pull to you, a friendly landing blinking in the dark. And I was in your orbit long before you thought to look for me, a shadow giving way to tiny spark.

You feel like a book I read a long time ago—

You are my deja-vu. An echo of the person I had imagined for myself.

I trust you to come back.

And I am a person whole, long before you. I am a person whole without you.

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 never loved anyone who deserved it.

I hope I learn you the way you’ve always wanted to be known.