edgarallenp0etry

[edgarallenp0etry]

megan lynne

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Once I asked them how they knew they were in love with me. 

“when i’m with you, everything just feels lighter.”  

I think they were trying to tell me I don’t know what love feels like. 

It’s almost summertime and i’ve felt like a caricature of myself for the last six months. I don’t know where the time has gone, but I know I am grieving it. 

I know i’m falling apart again when I open my eyes in the morning and don’t understand how it’s already May. The only thing I can register is that I should have listened to my intuition. 

I am trying not to regret, but I have recently been reminded of the extent to which my brain craves familiarity. For so long I had drawn a black sharpie around myself and screamed “this is not the same person who used to dream of death and hospital beds” The line I drew is not there anymore. I am wondering, yet again, if i will ever be separate from that sick girl. God, I’m scared of myself. i’d forgotten what that feels like, but i’m brutally aware that love is the only thing capable of making me feel like this. 

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I have a hard time undoing the notion in my brain that there are people who either don’t feel things, or feel them and then just stop. I convince myself that both are done with an eloquence I can only dream of experiencing once again. Frankly though, I’ve gotten to a point where feeling things and hurting is a much better fate than avoiding the pain and spending years watching it bite at your ankles. Or your soul.

Kafka lives on your bookshelf, along with several other books that make me want to crawl back into bed with you and peel apart the folds of your brain and lick each one. But I promise the way in which I want to consume your heart and mind is gentle– I’m trying to learn to love in a way that is pure and without ego, without attachment. As I remind myself of this desire, the ache to love right, I feel a visceral nag in the back of my head (they say this is where primal intuition lives) reminding me the that the way I feel about you is how I often feel when I’m about to try and eat someone alive. It is hard to love someone in the right way when you feel hunger pangs when you think about the fact that they speak five languages and you have a history of falling in love with people you must convince yourself are smart. 

The way you speak about love is easy for me to read, but so is everyone I find fascinating enough to study. You are highly sensitive but you have only accepted some of the things that come along with that, like thinking music is the most beautiful thing on earth and loving analog photography. The less glamorous stuff is buried in your chest and makes you think you’re having a heart attack every once in a while. The first time we talked I asked you if you have the tendency to suppress your feelings, and a week later you landed in the emergency room feeling as though an elephant had been sitting on your chest.

You have an individuality complex -although you would deny it because you fancy yourself a collectivist- which manifests itself in the enjoyment of underground jazz, obscure films, and probably feeling a little lonely. But I’m only guessing about the last part.

You have a disorganized attachment style that leans toward avoidant (trust me when I say I was shocked at the way you melted when you kissed me. I couldn’t tell if your lack of disgust for your affection toward me was because you were less avoidant than I initially thought, or if it was because you were so much so that you knew you could treat me like your wife without risking getting attached. Honestly, I’m still not sure).

By the second night I slept with you, I wanted to count every blackhead on your nose. The night before, the mere thought of that would have left me repulsed. That kind of closeness felt wet; heavy. But today I would count each one as if they were freckles. Your gentleness was rubbing off on me, I guess. In the morning we were holding each other, faces only inches apart. After a while, you smiled shyly and asked me if I had wrinkles. I said something like, “I’d hoped I’d get a few more years without them, but maybe I have frown lines from being an unhappy child,” before realizing you meant freckles. Your multilingualism was even more beautiful than I could have initially imagined. You told me you would try and kiss every one of them, before planting kisses all over my nose. It horrified me, but in the way that left me wanting to close my eyes and melt into you, not run away.

I got home and wrote in my diary,

“I know there are things I’d grow to hate about you but right now I just want to bask in what I don’t yet know.”

When I start writing those kinds of words, I know it is only a matter of days before I am ready to bury myself inside the person’s skin and it will be at least a year until I’m ready to cut myself out. Historically, I’ve been able to wake myself out of the dream and leave a patchy suture job behind, all while managing to remain relatively bloodless myself. But that was when I was 16, 17, 18 and I don’t want to do that anymore. I think I want to know you for a long time. 

I’m sure you feel things, but not the way I do. Never the way I do. 

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that summer reeked of newness. i thought about the buzz of telephone wires for the first time when she told me she lived in the south in a past life. we were soulmates, she said, in between cicadas and smiles. we didn’t know where or when or how, but we were.

our love felt new. it was raw and pure and spiritual. we reveled in our alignment. her face in my hands felt new. her vodka breath in my throat felt new. her soft lips and soft skin and soft body and quiet “is this okay?” felt new.

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they keep the silverware in the same place. you forget about it a little bit when you move out, but during the holidays, it comes back. the way you smooth over your life for them, a gentle reckoning.

for a while, you tried to find yourself by being wild. throwing your body at the emergency exit. finding comfort in the sharpness of a held breath. you used to write wake up on the inside of your wrist. you couldn't calculate the weight of your own sorrow, only that nobody was looking at the anchor of it. you tried maladaptive coping mechanisms like catnip. got caught half-in half-out of them. felt, weirdly, like you should be embarrassed of all of it.

but it does get better. mostly it's just that you become a priority to yourself. it turns out that lending yourself the ragged edge is just cutting open more marrow. for a while, it felt good to see a physical representation of inward agony. but who was that punishing? you learned, slowly (so slowly it was almost invisible sometimes) that you could put love into the wound instead. that the floor was comfortable because it was certain - but it was cold, and unwanting. instead there is a warm bed. you learn to treat yourself like a kid again. gentle-parent yourself into the shower and over breakfast and into laughing without effort. you do wake up.

but then you come home again, and it is like everything is a strange kaleidoscope of childhood moments. here is how you inherited your mother's anxiety. there is the same music playing, and you can't sit down without worrying you forgot to do something. your mother's clipped words and hovering hands - are you sure? are you sure? birdlike, you find yourself seeing unwell and still end up repeating.

here is your father's anger. you are 16 again. there was a moment where you remember thinking - holy shit. i am so much more emotionally mature than you. how you have to talk him down from minor inconveniences, how you parent him like an errant and spoiled toddler who can't be told no, and i mean it. you feel the warp of you. why you can't be in the same room as people having a completely normal conflict. why your skin crawls if there's ever a hint of a fight. why you live with your hands up, placating. and god forbid you get angry. you feel that little spoiled kid rage against the iron will of you. not you, not your hands. you would rather cut your own tongue out of your head, no matter how valid her argument is.

and you're so fucking far from where you were as a kid. you've done so much healing. and there's this little sad part of you that can see the shadow of your past, and your hands wrapped into each other so tightly you made your knuckles white. and how much your parents are just people, and haven't changed much, and still keep the spoons in the drawer to the right.

there is a long dark tunnel here, and it has a name, but you haven't learned how to process that kind of speech yet. close the cabinet. make a note to go get more oat milk. close your eyes.

this place was never home, was it.

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the bread is crumbling and there is no water. I know you can’t love me anymore but I still scramble for a seat at your dinner table. a piece of anything made by you fills me more than sitting at a table without your touch

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It is November and I have been in a state of limerence over you since I first set my eyes on you on the first day of school. 

When you cancel our first date three times, I try to be casual, but I have imagined us kissing in every elevator this place has, and I haven’t even met you yet. 

Well, not like this. I haven’t met you as my future girlfriend, our first date finally happening in the basement of the campus center, my face bright red, unable to hold eye contact for longer than three blasted seconds.

In my head, you’ve pushed me up against the wall of the elevator every night. You can imagine how delighted I am when it finally happens for the first time. I choke on how badly I want to tell you that it isn't the first time, not really. I feel insane when I finally do tell you, knowing you’d never thought of me like that, at least not until now. 

When I met you for the very first time in September, really truly the first time, you were wearing a t shirt and black converse and I remember it as if it were yesterday. You only recalled it when I reminded you, and even then, I suspect you were lying. I know you will never love my face the way I have always loved yours. 

It is December now, and it is all moving so slowly I wish it would just stop. I think I am your rebound but I guess I don’t know for sure. Well, my mind doesn’t, but my body does. It’s 5am and I am shaking. I am sick over you. I know I will always feel like your rebound. 

It’s January and I’ve only ever moved on your timeline. I am dedicated to making you feel safe, so I move toward you slowly. you do not possess the same dedication. We tell each other we both struggle with communication, and this time we will work on it. I lie- you have no idea that there are words that have needed to spill out of me since the day I met you. You are only just becoming emotionally invested in me so when you ask me to be your girlfriend, I latch onto the avoidance you are just starting to throw away. One night with your fingers inside me, I tell you I want to be yours. I guess if I’d meant it, it wouldn’t have only come out while you were fucking me.

By February, you are holding back “I love you’s” while we’re drunk at a party, and it does not excite me the way it should. It does, however, bring me hope that I will soon have a safe place within you to put down all of my feelings. Your friend calls while we’re making love and you leave right before I come. When we finally make up, it is because you are crying on my shoulder about an older man who hurt you when you were 16, not because you made me feel the cheapest I have felt since I’ve fucked men. Your pain has been my pain since the moment I saw you, so I forget to tell you about how I cried for three days straight and I haven’t felt this unwanted since I was 16.

It’s March and we’ve finally admitted our love for one another. I’ve never tiptoed so hard around anyone. Funnily enough, you say this is the closest you’ve ever been. I spend far too much time convincing myself this is enough, while my heart drops wondering if it’s the closest we ever will be. 

April comes and I’m so in love in with you it makes me sick. I’m prepared to change my mind about staying around for the summer, but when my father scares you one night, we both recoil. We are in shambles again, and I know this time we’re not coming back from it.

I memorize every little detail about you. I remember that you don’t like your shower water too hot and you need your comfort shows and you like to sleep upside down when you’re scared. You see yourself lying on top of a car in the rain when your mind is shutting down. I can’t, however, figure out how much you want me around, so I sit quietly and wait for you to make the first move.

The night before we break up we fuck for the last time. our eyes are open while we kiss. you hold me as I finally tell you how unloved I have felt. “i’m just learning how to love you and now it’s ending” you say.

The next morning you can’t peel your eyes away from your phone. all i want is to hold you for the last time. I drop you off at the airport while mystery of love is playing. to my surprise, I think this is the last kiss we will ever share.

I spend the summer grieving you. To anyone who listens I talk about you. how much love I am capable of holding for you despite your absence. I know you are not doing the same.

Three months passes and we are feet away from each other once again. Your friends hold you back from me at parties, but when you're sober you act like I'm nothing. to be fair, I give you the same.

It's almost November, now. It's been almost exactly a year since the first time you texted me. A mutual friend tells me you miss me so against my better judgment I text you. You agree to meet. While we are talking about taking things slow, your hands end up in my hair. only a moment after you tell me you've missed holding me, you tell me your gut is saying this is a bad idea. you are running away, and the rejection I faced every day of our relationship is choking me yet again.

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That spring we lived off of red wine and each other’s lips and three hours of sleep. the clocks moved back to allow less rest- springtime did not catch its breath and neither did we. 

You were volatile, immature. Living in an old body that housed the rage of a child that never got to speak. But never toward me. I’ve always had a knack for finding angry people who aren’t angry toward me. At least, not at the beginning. 

It was easy to see what made you fall by looking at your deficits. I possessed a conviction with which you became interested. Within me was a dedication to doing the things that made me hurt, but coming out the other side with a smile and newly unclenched fists. That is, compared to you. You were effectively drowning in your self-made pool of pity and cheap beer, and I was 19 and excited to turn away from easy escapes and casual conversation, to live a life full of statement. To do so was a newly rediscovered thing of mine, sure, but the fact that it was new was all the more interesting to you. A collision of a young soul in an old body, and an old soul in a new one. I lived in my own world with a gentle diligence that made you feel grounded (your words, not mine). like maybe you were made for something more than hangovers and living at your parents’.

I can see what made you fall by looking at your deficits, and I felt safe in your limerence because of it. My strength was strong, but it was new, nonetheless. I still burned to be loved, even if by someone who’s love didn’t add up to much. especially by someone who’s love didn’t add up to much. It was safe and warm to touch my tongue to someone who had a stack of credit cards in her wallet, who was old enough to call someone her ex wife. And in all honesty, it was easy to love someone who idolized me for things I’d only ever hated myself for. Next to your emptiness, my passion burned red, and it kept me warm. For once, my intellect was clear. Visible was my hunger for a life driven by values, my sense of self defined in permanent marker. In standing next to someone who was hollow, I could see myself for the first time in my life. In standing next to someone that was fuller than you, you could pretend that you possessed a wholeness, too. 

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You were the first person to whom I’d said “I love you” and worried I wouldn’t hear it back.

We were holding each other, sweaty bodies pressed together. we could not have been any closer, but it was never enough to make me feel safe. To this day, I don’t know whether the fear shooting through my body belonged to you or me.

You’d watched me on mushrooms the day before, giggling like a child and burying my face in your neck. When our lips touched I saw colors. In the moment it was fucking heavenly. I won’t say I regret it but showing someone a piece of you like that is horrifying.

the orange glow from my salt lamp lit up the closet of a dorm room I lived in that winter. I stroked your head. Soft, thick curls wrapped around my fingers. The only thing between our bodies was the sweat that had begun to pool. Some from me, some from you. That kind of intimacy made me melt. it made you recoil.

I finally break the silence:

“will it make you want to run if I say it?”

“say what?” you reply

“you know.” gently.

“say it.”

a pause

“i am very much in love with you”

you said it back. there should have been relief. I could only panic about you leaving.

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— clarice lispector, the stream of life

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“Consider this: we fuck with the lights on. You trace the flat shape of my breasts when I lay down. We keep the windows open because the rain smells like the closest we’ve ever been to Heaven. We watch the ferns drip like they’re heavy with honey. I cut red peppers in the kitchen. You put on every song we’ve ever fallen in love to. I’m beginning to lose the difference between our skin. I’m cold when you’re shivering. I ache when you’re lonely. I can feel the warmth in your pink, fluttering heart, and I hold it in my hands.”

— Schuyler Peck, On A Long Weekend

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forever you will remind me of springtime.

you are soft, sweet, warm.

the cherry blossoms bloom as we fall in love. I don’t have much time to think, but my soul tells me there is something deeply lively about that.

you are new, fresh, bright.

the clocks move back to allow less rest. I live off of red wine and your lips and 3 hours of sleep— springtime does not catch its breath and neither do we.

I am vernal, awake, abloom.

flowers are to grow. love is to be made. and for you I do not rest.

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-Amy M. Homes, "This Book Will Save Your Life"

[TEXT ID: "I don't know anything anymore. Is that normal? Is it normal to notice the enormity of everything and just go blank?" END ID]

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Pink, Sylvie Baumgartel

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Jericho Brown, from Another Elegy (”This is what our dying looks like”)", The New Testament

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— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath

[text ID: And so it seems I must always write you letters that I can never send.]

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Blythe Baird, from If My Body Could Speak; “Relapse”