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Define loneliness? Yes. It’s what we can’t do for each other. CLAUDIA RANKINE
Her name was Cash and every day she drew a new picture of a dolphin jumping out of the water, a slew of v’s flying in the poorly blended sunset. She stored the pictures in a binder labeled DOLPHIN. Every single picture was the exact same. I thought her commitment to this single task meant she would make a great girlfriend. Something no one has ever said about me: She wants her partner to have many interests that are not her.
Pop Quiz: Q: Is it smart to categorize people as either good or bad? A: Of course it isn’t.
As for me, I fall in love with the kid. I finally understand what all the fuss is about: a tiny someone is predisposed to trust you and you have the chance to prove them right.
You have your business face on. Just as I am about to stop recording, you turn to me and say, If someone were to look at us, would they know we were in love?
No one else knew our wedding song. In it, the singer laments his lover’s fading time on Earth and all the things they never got to do together, while she reassures him that if she had one more life, she’d spend it by his side. I suppose it sounds a bit morbid to do the first dance to a song about death, but it wasn’t really a song about death, was it? It was a song about choice. About loving someone so much you’d spend another lifetime with them, knowing you could easily choose someone else, go down a different path, chase the euphoria of the unknown.
We is the most tender word I know.
I’ve heard it said that love is choosing to listen to how someone’s day went at least thirty thousand times. Love is saying, I am here, I am paying attention, and I care about that fight you had with your coworker. Beau, sometimes listening to you scream Fuck today, let’s go on a date was the only thing keeping me alive. From now on, I will show the kid that I love her by listening to her explain how carpet squares work.
“Humans were made to move,” he says. I can hear the shrug, the fine-don’t-listen-to-your-old-man in his voice. I wouldn’t know what to do on a date. How would I hold my body? What would I say? Was I supposed to laugh softly or loudly? How many questions was too many questions? Was it better to be charming or vulnerable? How do I keep my human mask from peeling off?
The first two lines: “Don’t believe the body that turns away from itself / don’t believe the body that claims to love its absence.”
Once the post-sex haze has lifted, I begin to feel sad about the possibility of losing her—a possibility that exists between all humans at all times, which makes it so painfully ordinary that I can’t imagine acknowledging its presence out loud.
“Not really, no,” I say, clearing my throat. “What happens when the kid asks how I got my shadow? I can’t tell her the truth.” “For starters, stop thinking about the truth as a series of words,” she says. I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, but I like listening to her. “There are a million ways to show your child that sometimes the people we love most are the ones we wind up accidentally hurting.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” I say. “I’m no longer avoiding my own avoidance,” I say, thinking of Siegfried.
There was that time I asked Siegfried what we should give criminals instead of shadows. I didn’t necessarily think we needed to bring back prisons, but I didn’t know what we were supposed to do with the people who’d committed serious crimes. Real crimes, not Kris crimes, not the kid’s crimes. Not Siegfried crimes, or so I’d thought at the time. “Forgiveness,” he said. “And what if they don’t deserve it?” “What is this talk of deserve? What does that word even mean?” he said.
Finally, I think I’ve got it all figured out: there is space for all of us here. ◼ You are all we speak about for weeks. Michelle tells me Beau stories and I listen and smile and fill to the brim. I nuzzle my face against her face. I want to live in the bothness of love forever.
