I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

Define loneliness? Yes. It’s what we can’t do for each other. CLAUDIA RANKINE

What I mean is, it never once occurred to me that you, too, were mortal.

But I don’t want to be strong, I want to be a time-traveler.

We is the longest word I know.

I had to choose, I would say the moment between when you decided to kiss me and when we actually kissed, that is where I wish to live forever. Inside my anticipation, dying to receive you.

Tomorrow, I decide, will be better. Tomorrow, I will recover from today.

Things didn’t work out with her for the same reason things never do: she felt like a distraction from my life, instead of a part of it.

“What’s today going to be like?” I ask the kid. “Like yesterday, except today?”

Not long after the dreams begin, I start waking with finger-shaped bruises between my ribs. The first stage of grief, I realize, isn’t denial—it’s clinging.

“The human brain is nature’s biggest mistake. An honest mistake, but a mistake, nonetheless. Nothing that has happened should have happened.”

All they do, besides play the guitar and drums at all hours, is plan their next meals and drinks and then consume those next meals and drinks while talking about their next meals and drinks. Their predictability soothes me.

BDSM is about the exchange of power, the class instructor had said. The one who gives it up is the one with all the power.

Pop Quiz: Q: What is the difference between nice and kind? A: Only one is a result of fear.

“Yeah. I mean, I just stopped looking back. I try to focus on what I can do in the present. Don’t think about the future either.” He seems over the conversation, but I can tell he’s trying. “Why not?” “I don’t know, I guess I don’t want to waste time thinking about something that doesn’t even exist yet,” he says.

Rearrange my ribs to make room for what comes next.

Had she been paying attention, she would have known it hadn’t happened overnight, that it took a million tiny stabs to bleed democracy dry.

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.

I think I would like to wake up every day and choose someone again,

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.

“The wrong people have all the power,” she says.

“I’m not sure what this has to do with me,” says the kid on the way there. “Pretending to be happy for someone you love is a key life skill,” I lecture. “Or we could actually be happy for him,” says Michelle. “You make a point. Not a particularly good one, but a point.”

When I think of the word family, I picture a surprise party, everyone floating toward the ceiling like balloons.

What I’m trying to say is—I’ve never been afraid of anything more than I’ve been afraid of my own happiness. But I want it, oh I want it.

“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.

“Today is the day she’s going to learn the difference between a dad and a father,” I say. “Sometimes you still call your dad your father.” “That’s when he’s misbehaving,” I say. “Like how your mom calls you by your full name when you’ve been caught smoking weed out of an apple with the neighbor, Daniel.” “That’s an oddly specific example,” says Michelle.