mitzii

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To whoever loves me next,

I’m sorry if I’m afraid of you
or if days of flirting turn to
radio silence, without warning.

I’m sorry if I make you say the words
over and over and over until I believe them.
(I’m sorry if I don’t believe them.)

I will probably spend more time
worrying about losing you than I spend
trying to keep you.
Trouble is,
every single time I’ve ever thought
something was too good to be true–
I’ve been right.

Understand,
I will know how to be vulnerable with you,
but I won’t know how not to regret it.
And I have no idea how deep we’ll be
into this relationship before I admit
I’ve never done this before.
Not really.
Not in any way that counts.

Before I admit that I know
how to put my body inside someone else’s
but not how to make it beautiful.

I probably won’t be easy to love.
Too many people loved me badly,
I’m not sure I know how
to do it right.

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I believe that there are people who truly dislike romantic gestures, in the same way that there are people who truly dislike sweets. And it’s certainly true that a lot of what passes for “romance” in our broad cultural definition—the Jumbotron proposal, the bed covered in rose petals—has been neatly split from genuine emotion, like a painted eggshell blown clear of its guts. It’s a charade of romance, a mask we give straight men to wear when they’re frightened or confused by showing their naked face. I truly did not want that, and I still don’t, and I never will. Being dragooned into acting as a partner in these romantic pageants is like having one of those dreams where you’re hauled up unprepared on stage.

But attentiveness, consideration, compliments, small and large kindnesses, feeling truly loved, having someone put you first while you put them first because you’re in cahoots to make each other’s lives easier and better: most people do like that, when it’s thoughtful and sincere. It’s here, more than in the big gestures, that romance lives: in being actively caring and thoughtful, in a way that is reciprocal but not transactional.

And yet, for most of my life, I never would have asked for or expected such a thing. Many women wouldn’t, even the ones who secretly or not-so-secretly pine to be treated like a princess. It’s one thing to fantasize about a perfect proposal or an expensive gift; that’s high-maintenance, sure, but it’s also par for the course. It’s asking something from a man, but primarily it’s asking him to step into an already-choreographed mating dance. But asking to be thought of, understood, prioritized: this is a request so deep it is almost unfathomable. It’s a voracious request, the demand of the attention whore.

Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.

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I tend to fancy flowers too much. That is how I met him. I could see him through the window, watching as he sat outside of a shitty café shop I was in smoking a well finished cigarette. Snorting, I watch as he throws it into a rose bush beside him. This man wasn’t the known stereotyped bad boys that people read on a screen with face piercings and inappropriate tattoos on his body with vibrant eyes that looked into your soul as he held a smirk across him lips. No, this unnamed boy dressed with some sense of fashion, folded sleeves and slacks. He held emotion, only one which was madness.

This man, a indescribable human that was so unbearable that reached inside my body and ruined my soul breaking my heart in the process just by the snap of fingers. How we met wasn’t in a cliché way, not in the one that they show in movies where their hands accidentally touch and look into watch others eyes feeling all those sparks or something bullshit. Hell, we felt something alright when I orgasmed in his bed. I would always worry what people would say if I was seen with him in public, but he never gave a fuck about what others said about the boy. His motto was fuck everybody and be you. He was always blunt and honest even you never asked for his opinion. The way he did me, he’d make you realize who you’re and that nobody is really important so why give a flying fuck? I always disagreed and that’s what he liked about me.

One night when he found me drowning my sorrows in alcohol and smoking only god knows. That man shook something in me that sticls with me today. Instead of caring for me, he slapped me across the face and told me to stop being such a shitty baby.  He told me that if I didn’t like the way I was living was for me to go run away. He told me to find a city where nobody wouldknow who I was and to stop worrying about everything fucking thing that’s happened to me and to grow a pair to just get over it and to just start living life. To create something that only the people around us can remember. That we didn’t have to be famous to be remembered just be remembered for the people you love.

The boy that had eyes of autumn leaves and skin so smooth. Lips so soft I don’t think I could bare I could kiss another. Then man that stole my humanity and left like I was garbage. I didn’t want to believe that happened I’d feel this way. To feel something for a guy that I knew would never live a forever with me like I fantasized. I have and still will deny the fact that I was in love with him. I don’t think I was ever in love. I was just in love with the idea of him.

The thought of him is was ruined me. He burned a piece of him, scarring inside of my mind to never forget about him. I never had the chance for it to rub across his tongue and hear it feeling the vibration of my own voice from the back of my throat looking into his eyes to find his reaction, but never had the gut to admit it in person because the fear of his reaction would’ve killed me.

So I’m just have the memories. He never laughed much, but when he did he laughed like god. When he’d squeeze my knee I’d always jump at the odd feeling, I never got use to his touch, other than him pleasuring me. Sometimes he’d get me high before we fucked. Whispering in my ear that he’d fuck me silly. . I I’ve spent so many times in his bed I’ve lost count.

He always told me that I was changing him and maybe that was the way of him saying I love you? Who knows. He can’t tell me now, can he?

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"I can’t remember the last time
I looked in a mirror and knew the face I saw.
I can’t remember a time when
I liked the face I saw.
Last week I couldn’t remember my name.
Things fade, sometimes,
I’m used to that by now.
Someone asked me how I was and I
Forgot to answer.
Forgot to think of an answer.
Forgot to feel an answer.
It’s not that I’ve never known myself, it’s that
I’ve never liked what I knew.
It’s that I can’t remember what it feels like
To be in a body.
It’s that I have forgotten myself.
My parents ask if I remember when I was little.
I say yes.
I don’t remember.
I used to remember.
I was always the girl who could tell you
Exactly what she’d said, exactly what she’d felt.
But I can’t remember what I feel anymore.
I can’t remember how to feel anymore.
The dreams come and go.
My nights and days bleed together.
I don’t know if I have slept recently.
I can’t remember falling asleep or waking up.
I don’t know if I am awake.
I don’t know if this is a dream.
I don’t know if this is death.
I can’t help but hope I wake up."

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Shouldn’t you be over this by now?

I’m sitting on the couch, feet tucked underneath the cushions. My scalp still tingles with the pomegranate shampoo that made you turn and smile when I sat down. I look at the clock ticking in the living room and wonder what’s so special about her cheap perfume.

What did you see in him?

Do, not did. If you look closely enough, you can see her legs clenching whenever you walk by. She likes the way you walk, you know, the way you dig your hand in your pocket, half slumping, half straight, the way you lift your head in the air a fraction of a degree. Degrees. If she dropped her calculator, would you pick it up? Probably not. Not because you’re rude, but because you don’t notice anything. Never have, never will. She likes that about you, too.

He’s not worth it.

Of course not. I’ve never been good with faces, but when I close my eyes, I can see your array of solid colored T-shirts projected like film against my eyelids, your sun-drenched skin, your Adam’s apple bobbing in a hiccup of a guttural laugh. I can taste your fizzy adolescence from here, carbonation caught in my  throat and gone in a second with a less than temporary sting. I want to hold you forever. But he’s not worth it. Didn’t I just say it was a real shocker he had a girlfriend in the first place? Poor girl, she could do so much better than him. I bite down on the straw of my soda and blow a few bubbles as if for emphasis. They look at me and smile in approval. Priceless is different than worthless, the ice is melting at the bottom of my cup, and I know I could never do better than you.

Are you okay?

I nod. I wonder if when she ends the call and mumbles, “I love you,” the words laced with sincerity and sleep, you lay awake at night, body clenched stiff with delight, your thumb hovering over the end call button but not quite touching it, as giddy as I am when you so much as glance my direction. You two look good together. I swear I’m happy. Scrawl that in the yearbook and sign it with a flourish, hand it back with a grin and feel your heart bust open like an exploded pen. We both have our reasons.

You’re responsible for your own sadness.

Who’s to blame? I trace my finger over the kitchen countertop, but I really want to trace it on the planes of your face. Feel your skin like Braille, the boyish raise of your cheekbones signals your pleasure, the downward slope your emptiness. My mom will ask me if I’m okay when she opens the door and sees me sopping wet from the hurt that cascades like swollen raindrops down my shoulders, the smell of teenage infatuation both overwhelmingly pungent and devastatingly foreign. A perfume tucked back long ago that I’ve just spilled all over myself. I tell her not to worry, my teeth are chattering. I break, I buy.

You need to get over it.

It’s easy to say, easy to think, easy to lather up the tangles when you know he’s going to stroke and inhale your hair in the morning. Tear free. But human will is a much more fragile concept.

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