You know things well if you experience them. My mother taught me generosity; I was given a token everyday as a child. These tokens came in the form of Redbox movies, hugs, ice cream. I was always allowed to indulge.
When the girls decided they didn’t want me in their lives anymore, they arrived with ammunition. You are impulsive, they spit out. It is the best and worst thing about you, one murmured. I searched my wheelhouse: I was never taught this. I’m not sure from where I developed this superpower/Achilles heel.
Chronic nausea. Goes and then comes back. Does that mean it’s chronic? The sight of food makes my stomach twirl, it makes the men in my stomach angry. They get livid at the sight of it—they stomp around and invade my intestines. It’s a serious handicap, I want to scream out to the sea. I really need someone to understand how much comfort is lost when your stomach is the sea.
Moved in today with Olga.
& Now it’s a week of living in the new place and I can’t imagine any other definition of home. Olga and I are mystics, we burrow in our flat under duvets made of silk thread and sage, we whisper incants into our rats’ ears and then place mushy banana into their tiniest hands… We drink so much tea while sitting in our living room, silent, looking around at what we’ve done. We’re always making—building things. I’m discovering new ways of comfort. Olga holds my hand and leads me into a world of play. It’s magic and mundane all at once. There’s a lot of cleaning involved, a lot of corners to wipe down, surfaces to dust. I forgot how to cook, so Olga and I must learn again. I think they’re filled with a world of good—Olga. They’re a muted wisdom, a prophetic gaze. They’re also stunning, sculpted like something feral and porcelain. They love me. I feel loved by them. I feel asleep during the day, all day. So calm and so sleepy walking around the space doing my little deeds. I brush my teeth. I make breakfast. I take a bath. I place one of the rats onto the flat of my palm and lift him up to my eyes, telepathically communicating love and strong ownership. The lights in the new flat are all perfectly hued, all warm or twinkly in the right way. Everything feels placed as it should be. I sit in my room and smoke weed, hugged by the black princess mesh curtain around my bed that my new beau installed the other day. Nick. That Nick installed.
Nick is back. Nick puts his fingers in my mouth and then reaches a new kind of climax, all the while touching—holding me everywhere. Nick drives me down roads of fields and plains in his work truck, little branches and twigs finding their way into my bag like presents, presents everywhere. Nick listens to Kurt Vile, Nick is a Pessimist. Nick is Older, and so yeah, it must be Nick. Because these are all the things I know about him. I know the person I knew in 2019 is dead. I’m aware of that reality. But then there’s another reality where he didn’t fucking kill himself that day and maybe these two realities have merged in some serendipitous moment to bring him back, back to me.
I know this is cruel to the real man who installed my black princess mesh curtain for me. But I can’t help but feel blessed. Everything is aligning lately.