I Love You, Then

Right now I’m writing from the other side of who cares; I could make a list.

His kisses are my push-pulling and her bug-eyed screechings my semi-consciousness. My constant spiritual infidelity.

Later on I’ll go swimming or something, fake the kind of apathy that only the clinically slender can produce, an I.V. drip of fuck off. His broken smile will swim circles in me, maybe, but for right now I’m alone. Nothing but alone. For right now I’m manufacturing a foul mood, twisting in place.

He has big, warm and liquid brown cow eyes fringed by plaster cast saint lashes, a Roman nose, snaggleteeth, what could be called a larger than average penis around the head of which hangs the slight odor of paperclips, a halo of sharp and metallic, cold peanut butter. The kind of smell that sticks to your fingers, only to wake you up early the next morning, last night tugging hard at your pelvic girdle.

He is at turns vain and perversely introspective, quiet and nervous giggles, sweaty breath and, “did you come?” He is a thousand hormonal responses kicking against my insides.

I am hard and smooth and yellow, I am, “yes,” and, “maybe,” and a hundred times pretty and bent, all bony knees and righteous elbows, loose fists.

Here’s for not caring about anything.

And here’s for continuing on in spite of rising nausea, mucous lining the wall of my esophagus, black dots dancing in the corner of my eyes, calling out for pause. Here’s for bent over and spitting blanks, this Middle English view from below.

Or my life clicking by faster than I can grab at it, faster than my fingers can curl around it, dry skin cracking then pulling taut; right now what I need is certainty hard and warm against the curdled red of my palm.

There won’t be any of that.

“Look out, she has a knife,” and don’t I ever.

---

A splinter, the skin around and below it a dark and alluring blue, a rounded triangle of looming infection and there are two places you should never hit a man, he said. Two places where if you attack, claws out, yellow and black, you’re just asking for it. For the angry bear.

“Never the face,” and at this point I was nodding, maybe imperceptibly, counting ten steamboats and staring at a point somewhere below the shiny, tight skin of his ankle, “Never the face.”

And I said, “Oh.”

“Here,” he began slapping fiercely at his torso, caught in the heady passion of his point, “Or here, or here or here.”

“But not the face,” and this is Roman nose, snaggleteeth, former prince of Spain.

And I said, “Not the face,” eleven steamboats.

“My face-”

“Your beautiful face.”

“Never,” exclamation point.

“I had no idea,” and this was me again, and now one of my legs was numb, its cries muffled beneath the weight of the other, somewhere beyond thirty-four steamboats.

Something about nails, holes, and then, “I don’t like to hit women.”

But then later still, this time in September, he’s calling from somewhere, his voice deeps tones and squeaky edges I can’t recognize. He said, “I’m over here missing you.”

And I said, “Yeah, me too.”

Then, “I can’t sleep without you,” pause, maybe lost connection, “I was used to you.”

And I said, “You know what I did Wednesday? I-“

“What?”

“Wednesday-”

”What?”

“Wednesday I spent the whole day crying, I don’t know why,” and I did know why but there was no explaining that, not in my Southeastern Massachusetts strain of Spanglish.

There was something else, maybe, “I know why.”

“Oh.”

“Dime que me quieres.”

“Tu ya sabes que te quiero,”

”Quiero escuchar lo, di lo.”

“Te quiero, pues.”

This is nervous laughter, long pause, background noise, then. “At the count of three we’ll both hang up.”

“Okay.”

“One,” and silence, maybe he was expecting me to count along; as it was, I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, “Two. Three.”

And for maybe an hour afterwards I’m giddy and embarrassed, bouncing around someone else’s apartment, my tits sticking to plastic sheathed burgundy fur, dirty since 1965.

He calls back and it’s after that that I’m writing this. He sends me a thousand kisses.