Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

call it “The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.

I didn’t want his children. I wanted him, wholly and irreversibly. I wanted to become intertwined with him in a makeshift, cobbled-together AngieBen human quilt. One patch of his skin next to one patch of mine, one sliver of my tongue overlapping a stitch of his. If ever there were a desire to die, it would be together, him and I.

It made me embarrassed to witness it, like I had caught some private moment of a dying animal.

For me, I always fancied the people I lost touch with as living full and happy lives. Sure, if we’d parted on hostile terms, I might’ve held a grudge for a little bit, but my sentimentality always took over at some point and I’d start dreaming them up as having beautiful houses, loving partners, children, fulfilling travels, and everything and anything they always wanted. Social media made it so tempting, in times of emotional vulnerability, to look up the people who were both dead and alive at once.

I decided that day I wasn’t good enough for women, and I went out to the bars that night looking to hurt myself with the nearest man, which ended up being Matt. I know it’s not rational. Does grief have to be?