They might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen to speak and move and stretch and smile and mess up and make toast and tea and walk around idly and fumble with necklaces and throw their hands up in silly ambivalence and cry silently, like under a veil, and yap and yap and yap and yap, and yet, we rarely hug. We don’t hug or cuddle like I do with Riley. Olga and I mind-meld, we juggle real things, in the air, real things fly around. We clown and take turns giving dares. We listen to the same songs, over and over, cauterizing wounds with comfort, with routine. It’s all comfort and all routine. Not in the way you think. Maybe opposite to the way you think. The comfort is make-shift, the routine is commitment. A commitment to loyalty. To fealty toward the pact. The pact is about saving. Finding the other worth saving. Externalizing the self. Creating and living an ethics together. Dependence isn’t shameful. No, here, I’m allowed to need you. I’m doing so much needing and a ridiculous amount of yearning. I realized the other day that I once had men dying for me, dying a thousand deaths for me, dying all those deaths and then showing me the bodies. I haven’t seen any bodies lately but then again; I haven’t been doing any killing. I can’t remember the last time I had victory with men. Lately, each conversation’s been ended with some desperate plea. Some call for remittance. I don’t want money just bodies. Show me the bodies, the bodies. I need to see the bodies, I say. They’re never interested in that. They’re never interested in the evidence, in the actual stuff of experience. Everyone’s disappointing me and I can’t think of a way out of my web. No theorem or axiom is helping; no amount of rubbing myself raw is spawning any kind of brilliant solution. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being creative with it but the fantasy of giving up is total technicolor, my favorite kind. I don’t know when I started being so lazy. I’m embarrassed of it, but it also feels central to the new me, to this newfound acceptance of failure. I’m messing up but covering my tracks, and my approximation of things is always about right. After all, I do feel like I always end up getting what I want.
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.
We’re crawling inwards. The flat’s massive,
but somehow bringing all our trinkets into it
makes it seem even bigger. I’m high, I’m stoned
from the morning, or I’m still stoned from yesterday.
But I’m not even stoned anymore, I’m just
in heaven, I’m so good, so flighty and full of ideas.
Everything we do and build in this space
is beautiful. Because all our thoughts
are of the right kind. For the first time
we have found someone else to vindicate
our truths. For the first time in forever
I’m not so worried about someone hurting me
in my sleep. All I’m concerned about
are my bearings—Olga, the pets, the kale
soup I make us when we’re struggling
to speak instead of cough. It’s not like
there isn’t any apprehension; sometimes
we sit in our respective rooms, wondering
who it really is we decided to live with.
But in our trellis garden we’ve decided
to not emphasize this, pain is de-emphasized
here, here is where we’ve safely put
our guards down. I’m vulrenable to psychosis,
to laziness, to greed and contempt. Olga listens
to 400bpm madness in the bath while she meditates.
Then, I know I can write it all off as artistry,
the psychosis, all of it. I miss what’s familiar,
so much. As in strip-malls. As in my mom, the
tired smell of my dog. As in driving down
the I-95. That summer I was gorgeous and in
California, sea and semen stuck in my hair
the entire time. Going to diners with the guy
I loved from Long Island. Feeling so memorable
and distinctly Yankee. But Olga knows this—
she listens while I lament. All the things
we touch and use and activate in the space
we call appliances. Appliances require magic.
Which is something only we have. We’re never
exclusionary; home is something we feel
should be ubiquitous. But we feel a marked
difference from Them. Each time we walk
into town the simulation begins to look
more and more transparent. I feel comforted
each morning, knowing she’s there, sleeping
there, in her room, sleeping with her head
facing the door. Comfort is everywhere. In
my bed, in the Uggs we share, in the dust
of our pet rats’ fur. We have pet rats.
It’s at once both absurd and earnest. I sit
in my room and listen to entire discographies,
making friends out of singers, in this way.
I think about him, all the time, but I’m always
thinking about someone, anyways. Too much
has happened. Olga’s seen more than you could
imagine. But we trod on because we want to believe
that things, done in a certain way, can be enough.
Like the pet rats. Like the spiced tea we drink
with milk. Like the pots and pans and duvet
we picked out from the trash, delicately
but urgently, thinking ours, ours, ours. We’re
so clearly not better than anyone else. It’s just
that our primary concern has and will always be,
fun. And fun never hurt anyone. The girl who was
once familiar to me, like Olga, haunts me day
and night. Her chapbook is brilliantly full of lies,
but it’s poetry, and she’s won. Her racoon eyes
feel placed on top of mine, sharing with me
glimpses of her life—better, successful, and full
of creation. So, I keep telling myself I am making
in different ways. My bed, for starters. Food.
I’m cooking really nice meals. I’m watering the plants,
the floor, the walls. Olga’s repurposing old makeup
wipes as décor and I’m trying not to take up
too much space. In the sense that I’ve realized
I’m quite loud. Being a loud person makes you
susceptible to dislike. I am mostly concerned
with being liked. But Olga likes me and that’s all
that really matters. We miss deadlines and I
fixate on the past. We paint our nails and get high,
watching the rats and losing track of time. It’s
everything I’ve wanted in a home even though
despair lingers. I promise Olga I’ll immortalize
us. Not because we’re special but because
we believe the other deserves something forever.
I’m throwing up less and making to-do lists.
I’m waking, waking and breathing and knowing
that tomorrow everything will be just as it was
the day before. It’s great.
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.
I made a new friend. Her skin is honey dew. Her tattoos are stitched in, 3-D, lace. She tells me that oftentimes in life, many contrasting things are true at once. My new friend is nuance. My new friend is wielding an empty wine bottle at a party, waving it around like someone’s about to be unlucky. My new friend steals, fucks and burps. My new friend feels like Big Sister, she feels like Kali. She promises to braid my hair, but not in the white girl way. She says we’ll go to Paris, that we’ll get matching vulgar words tatted on our asses. She’s older, so I know she won’t hurt me. She’s prettier, so I know she won’t want me. In that way at least. In other ways, I am wanted; I am loved because she uses my full name. My new friend loves me, she loves to go to the beach with me, to the grocery store with me, to the man’s house with me, to the other man’s house, to the ex’s house to break things, to the father’s house to upheave, to the mother’s house for chai. My new friend made a vase for me, years ago, years before I really knew her. Back then, it was a vase made by a stranger. Now, it is a vase made by my friend. My friend makes vases and movie sets made from clay men. I think she is gorgeous, maybe the most beautiful thing in this world, but then her art is even better. My new friend is chaos. She’s the coyote that sneaks onto the highway. She’s the faerie that plopped into our universe via some wormhole. She’s the vintage Betsy Johnson dress I wear on special days. She’s everything I am but packaged better. My new friend is a dreamy high, she feels like laughing if laughing never stopped. My new friend has toe rings and a tattoo of a swirl on her hand that she got laser removal on two times now, so now it really swirls, it swims, it softens into the honey. I don’t know her very well. I don’t know her last name and I’ve never witnessed her cry. I know she gets very sad sometimes, but part of me can’t believe it. Part of me thinks she’s Barbie. My new friend is Barbie if Barbie had done some critical thinking about gender and race and about the world, really. Also if Barbie were hilarious and sexy in a crow-like way. My new friend reminds me of a crow. Like a crow, my new friend is caw-cawing, caw-cawing so I must go. I’m really feeling good about this. Like this could be a new friend.