this is ok

The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.

I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we’d given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle. This is how we heal. I will kiss you like forgiveness. You will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book. I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat on your skin. I will write novels to the scar of your nose. I will write a dictionary of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally found you. And I will not be afraid of your scars. I know sometimes it’s still hard to let me see you in all your cracked perfection, but please know: whether it’s the days you burn more brilliant than the sun or the nights you collapse into my lap your body broken into a thousand questions, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I will love you when you are a still day. I will love you when you are a hurricane.

It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough for you to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you when you catch yourself telling off your boss for a decade of accumulated injustices, all the things you’ve never said circling inside you. It’s the rising wind that pulls you out of it, and you look up to see a cloud of leaves swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day were sighing, Let it go, let it go, for this moment at least, let it all go.

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest satellite dish in the universe, your smile as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed. Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder. I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand. I’ve been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence so far, without spilling a drop.

I keep telling you ‘I love you’ and it comes out as an apology. I’m sorry. You want it to be bolder, bigger, less pathetic. ‘Love’ has become a fighting word for us. You argue that you love me more. I don’t object. I turn over in bed, sob into the pillow, pity myself. I mumble it back to you because you like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth. We’ve turned caring for each other into a duty dance that’s cheapened ‘love.’ It has become another way of apologizing as you roll your eyes and say, ‘Sorry, I forgot to buy milk’, a habit with every evening’s, ‘Night, love you too’, a promise we keep breaking: ‘Of course I won’t, I love you’, a lie. It hits me that we no longer know what it means when you slap me across the face and instantly, I tell you I love you. I can’t help it. I have spent months associating it with this much pain. My insides are bullet-holed basins where the past goes to die. I feel death when you stand close. Stay away from me. I love you.

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep. Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

I. Our kiss is a secret handshake, a password. We love like spies, like bruised prize fighters, Like children building tree houses. Our love is serious business. One look from you and my spine reincarnates as kite string. When I hesitate to hold your hand, it is because to know is to be responsible for knowing. II. There is no clean way to enter the heavy machinery of the heart. Just jagged cutthroat questions. Just the glitter and blood production. III. The truth is this: My love for you is the only empire I will ever build. When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over. I will retreat to an island. I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry. I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks. I will fold the clean clothes. I will wash the dishes. I will never again dream of having the whole world.

Q: How many male novelists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: He lit a cigarette. His glass of whiskey lit a cigarette too. “I can only truly love my best friend,” he said, “but not in a gay way. Women wouldn’t understand it. They’re too gay.” Both of the cigarettes agreed.