graphic by kayleigh woltal
My sundress smells like you, and I don’t know if I should afford myself the pleasure of taking in what is left. I imagine if you were here to read that, you’d make a stupid little quip about “taking all of you in,” and I’d laugh a cheeky little chuckle. It’s hard to let myself write about you. I feel all my other experiences have been wasted ink on pages I won’t turn back to- mostly I’ve felt my efforts have always gone unappreciated. For some reason, I think if you saw this, you’d find it (and me) interesting. Of course, that’s not why I write, and of course, I have almost nothing on which to make that assumption of you.
I write because I love filling the pages of books no one will ever read. At the same time, I redact every typo in black ink to the fullest opacity in case someone might see. Sometimes my writing looks more like blackout poetry, and all of the subtext lives in the redacted voids.
I make the assumption of you because in the one night we’ve shared, your efforts to connect with me and comfort me were relentless in the kindest ways- because your intellect is sexy and intimidating, and I don’t know if I have the capacity to fully understand what it is you do, but I love how invested in your work you are and the smile you wear when you talk about it. Can you blame me for wanting to induce some sort of interest in you?
Of course, I won’t tell you any of this, not just because I know compliments make you uncomfortable, but I have enough humility to admit it’s always been too early to write love letters disguised as art. Regardless, I think you will always be a page I’ll turn back to gladly.
. . . . .
Okay, totally honest truth time. I took two double shots before meeting you at your house for the first time. I suppose the burn in my stomach felt better than the pit. I’ve taken three jello shots just now to write about you, I suppose for the same reason. I’ve spent the last week trying to gauge my expectations of what you could possibly bring into my life. In order to do that, I’ve had to spend this time with myself and myself only, which I guess is the important part. I have told you in a piece of writing you’ll never see that I write to fill pages with ink. That is entirely untrue. I write because I have never wanted to be the only person to understand the twists and turns and caverns of my inner world.
Since I’ve gained consciousness in this life, I have felt it my duty to map out every abyss, to mark every loose stalactite in hopes of saving any passersby from being broken open by my edges or consumed by my depths. As of today, I have decided to turn a new leaf, to write a new page. I am deciding to be an unapologetic flow for a change. If I inspire the people around me to break open, who am I to warn them, or to assume they wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy the experience? I am not begging, merely asking god, the universe, life-creating nature to bring me someone willing to trip on the fallen stalactites and dance in my abysses hand in hand. I no longer wish to be a lone traveler.
And to you, just as equally a gift from the universe, one of growth, I know you feel cautious as I remove the inherently self-pitying yellow tape that separates you from me. I see you eyeing the stalactites with your hand overhead, and I know you hold a trillion things that I’ll never come close to touching, and that is okay- spectacular, even. Your vulnerability is a gift you’ve chosen to keep for yourself, and I hope you see it as such, a gift. You have precisely zero chinks in your armor and I don’t know if I could ever compel you to take it off.
I have always hoped to be someone that inspires coze in life and in others. Someone you know your armor is useless weight with. More than that, I aspire to be someone you can leave your armor in. As if to say my inner world could become a cozy little cottage with a fire on the hearth for anyone willing to see that in me. I beg to be a space where the clinking of one’s armor can settle and the weight off their shoulders alleviated.
I know now that person is not you. Lessons learned, this one especially, are bitter-sweet. With every piece of newfound knowledge comes a decision, change or stagnancy. Every opportunity for change leaves something in the abyss, and with all of the potential energy just before every leap of faith I understand there is something worth leaping for. In all of the sleepy 3 am banter I may have to leave behind, I gain the possibility of “I love you <3” I gain the possibility of a life partner. In the comfort I’ve only felt sleeping next to you, I thought I might have sensed things changing for the better, and I suppose I was not wrong.