I fell back asleep and I dreamed of you
You had come to visit me from far away. We talked in a room that I didn’t recognize, but was mine. We were naked at one point, comfortable in each other’s presence, like friends who have known one another a long time. But also, you were so far away. You wanted to be beautiful in front of me, but maybe not much more. You wanted me to look and desire you. You were coy—a pretense of shyness that’s meant to be alluring—and sweetly absent, to cover what seemed like a trembling terror at being closer. And I wanted more.
I asked you questions about your life. And you started to disappear. There were some that you answered. You told me it had only been a couple of months since you were living alone. When I woke up it had been more like 5 or 6. And when I asked how it was feeling you said good, and I believed you. I asked about the man you’re dating and you started to recoil /and/ disappear, but more and at the same time. I asked how your eclipse was, and you became less. I asked if you spent it with him, and you started drifting away.
I followed your now ghostly body out to the parking lot of the room I didn’t know, and into the trunk of your car that I didn’t recognize, but that you had driven to see me that day.
I didn’t see you climb into the trunk, you were just there. There were dozens of books, about all kinds of things, arranged neatly in a spiral from the middle where the spare tire should be. You must’ve been lying down on top of them. I asked where they came from, why you have all these books with you and you said, almost playfully, maybe pleadingly, books are friends who don’t ask you any questions.
I couldn’t stop myself from telling you everything I wanted to know, but like, with urgency and force. You couldn’t stop disappearing. I told you how hard it is to watch you be like this. To watch you not want to be seen or known like you once had. Or seemed to. Especially want it so clearly at the same time. When you’re so complex and lovely and infuriating and incredible. You became even farther gone.
I told you how hard it was to watch you be ashamed of your desire, be ashamed of who you are. Like the way you talk about feeling when you watch someone struggle at karaoke. Sick and in pain. Like the slice and sear that Lauren Olamina feels when she sees someone bleeding or burned. It’s shame you can’t see. What does it feel like?
I reached in the trunk around Toni Morrison and Louisa May Alcott and grabbed your white cotton socked foot, the only part of you I could see. It was thin like a little girl’s. Like in the picture of you on the first day. Gently I started to massage the tiny bones of you there, and I could feel your muscles melt into relaxation. I was glad to touch you, but how much of you was left? How much could you even feel me, being half disappeared?
When I woke up in my bed just now I felt like I had just spent time with you, but, it didn’t smell like the way it always does when I have.
Why does it hurt you so bad to be known? What if you tried and it didn’t like you thought it might? What if I stop trying, would you disappear altogether? Would you come out of the trunk a whole person? Would you float away to someone new, someone still perfect? Someone you can say what you want to, and disappear from when the whole picture of you starts to form? What happened that made you think it’s better to disappear?
April 27th 2024 8:30 am
