Posting Till I'm Taken

People want to have a witness in their lives. One day, you're thirty and coming home to a bed and a stove. The fridge is stocked with cold juice and last night's dinner. The bank and utilities are the only ones mindful enough to pile your mailbox. The air circulating your blankets, books, and hobby stuff is warm, but a discernible coldness lingers in the hall. The craving for a loved one is sharper, pronounced, yet unmoving. Soon, the most gracious thing another human can do to you is to become an afterthought. In that time, a crying child in a cradle next to the bed, an aging parent, or a notification like a promotion or vacation catches attention faster than hi. Nobody's in the wrong; just priorities. Couples can't even look at each other over dinner. Why bother with you? So you decide that you'll pick another whose despondency motivates and binds. In doing so, one becomes two. Two toothbrushes. Two bunny slippers. The fridge now holds lemonade, face masks, and peach ice cream. People will call you desperate or dishonest for taking someone to have someone. But did it matter when with feelings or not, they own the same pronoun, mine? The risk wasn't one-sidedness; it was despair and age. It's lovely forevermore to have someone hold the camera, wide-eyed, cooing at you while you blow out your birthday candles. Navigator and driver together on road trips. You'll know one day, through the rhythm of daily life, that they remember buying your favorite cookie for your lunchbox. The bedsprings sagged under their weight. You have someone to run to. To cry. Be elated with. An excuse to finally go home. They feel the same. You're still giving someone the fullness of your heart. Your love given to them whole, shoveled with a spoon.

Some nights terrify me lately, the ones that sag over your eyebags as you look into the imaginary starry-clime ceiling, reading into the string of moments fate knitted for you. Under most moons, a beloved and you would tuck into the grass, blanketed by a gentle breeze. Here you close your eyes. Sweet dreams, darling. Tomorrow, I'll be here, next to you. I love you—pinky promise. But heartbreak and bouts of loneliness and sorrow compounded over the years evaporated the magic of love in my eyes, condensed to a science. No longer felt, but thought. Suddenly, you no longer sense the way leaves fall more slowly around her, how laughter makes your cheeks sore, how an argument ends in tears; you both want to come back and love again. It's what you know. But now I've lost the ability to feel the outline of a jar to harvest and sow love. I learn new vocabulary in its place. Therapy speak, millions of date ideas, analyzing a person on a microscopic level, so that you can deduce an attachment style because the curtains were blue in her room. Boundaries spoke for sensitive spots. Roles that could be picked and worn from the wardrobe that is you. Her lover, best friend, nurse, therapist, chauffeur, cook, financial advisor, handyman, admirer, significant other. You learn to give love in ways that feel like maintenance. So they won't take advantage of you. Impoverishing yourself when they leave. Sustenance, not satisfaction. Not hungry anymore, yet to be full. And knowing who to pick, sometimes, mistakenly, prematurely judging someone because the way they replied to a text matched an algorithm in the brain, ringing like a siren. How and who you'll love is a petri dish under observation. Another nameless case with changed variables. Sometimes I wish I could learn to love again like nature intended. But how can you turn the natural into the supernatural, after knowing how it works?