I want to write about him. I want to write about him in the way they used to. In the sand, slowly. Full of sunlight and ephemeral. Or through jutted movements of the body—arms, legs, neck cranking teeth showing teeth glistening saying please please please. I want what I write about him to inhabit that same force of desperation. And that same degree of misunderstanding; everything gets lost in translation. He always said conceptual. Conceptual was the way. We needed to communicate conceptually. I want what I write to be conceptual. I want it to be loud. I want it to be needy, nagging, wanting, gaping. It must be all these things at once. I want what I write to chase him, like a bee, buzzing, wavering, lethal. I want what I write to be a genealogy of love. Like a storybook, each chapter must advance the narrative. Until climax and crumble. Until history proves that it’s always been moving along some prediscursive arc. In a prediscursive sense, I want to write one thing, just one thing down. This one thing is the thing that comes before language. It contains all of history within it, within that one breath. This one thing represents everything that’s happened in relation to how it’s happened. Losing him on the train. Finding him, clutching at him, begging him never to leave again. The thing my dad said that hurt me. The person who I loved that died. My mom waking me up with a cup of tea and a smile because I’m all hers, I’m all she’s ever dreamed of. I want to express these things to him, and I want to do it through a grace note.
I often think back to that bathroom in Scotland, the one with yellow walls and porcelain everything. There was a claw-footed tub in the middle of the space, and I always wince, thinking about my awkward body in that beautiful bathroom. Inside that gorgeous tub. It was hyper-nice. It was mocking me. I took a bath, turning the water brown. My days were spent in forests, making a mess. He called me. We talked about devotion, about divvying. He admitted he was not as politically (or practically) familiar with care as I was. I told him I’d teach him about responsibility. I felt full and total, clear and heard. I think that is the only time we ever properly communicated. Beyond that, everything we understood about the other was just an approximation, a rounding up, a hoping.
My father made me frail. I was never enough. He was always leaving, always telling me, in detail, how he’d leave me.
I want to show him why I’ve been crazed, obsessed, injurious. I might just self-flagellate into something so pathetic it’s genius. It’ll be so brilliant and so me.
I’ve always been the type to lay all my cards out on the table. I’m not whimsical or aloof. I’m confessional and guilty of sin. I want to show him all of this; I really just feel like he needs to see all of it before he decides.