appendix a
;
dates after class
cuddling on the couch
you yawn and your arm meets my shoulder
i say really? and you say yes.
i lose interest and hurt your feelings and
spend the rest of the time avoiding you.
appendix b
;
a date in the park
knees pressed together in pubs
a hobo tells us to stay in love,
love is precious, later i say that was uncomfortable
and then i lose interest and hurt your feelings and
spend the rest of the time avoiding you.
i remember the way your hand felt in mine—or, no, just the idea of the way your hand felt in mine, the thinness of your fingers, the way i didn’t mean to reach for you but somehow i did and somehow you interpreted the motion correctly—even though i didn’t—and the way we tumbled behind everyone else toward the staircase, confused around corners, through the door, up the stairs. the way i let my hand cling to yours until the very last minute, until you fell behind a little.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince
illustrated by Gene Ha :: scanned from the original artwork :: personal collection :: 2008
it is two in the morning and i am suddenly struck with the insatiable need for a summer evening with you. in my imagination we curl up on my bed and turn the lights off, listen to the fan and our combined breathing and the crescendo of the crickets who have always been there. we don’t speak, until i tell you about last summer, the night you came home and called me from below my window, saying ‘why are you still awake?’ and ‘your light is always on when i come home.’ i tell you how your name on the caller ID was a surprise when it shouldn’t have been.
we are a long way from this small wish.
dinner first—so hungry i go right to the soup, which is my go-to. no dilly-dallying by the main meal line, hoping something looks good.
and then a salad, because i’m trying to lose weight.
and then a bagel because i’m still hungry. marielle looks at her watch.
it snowed last night, and then rained, so the long passage beneath the FAC overhang is sheeted with ice. inside the lobby is warm—too much. compensating.
we pay our three dollars each—it’s classical, so they’re charging less in hopes of attracting more. it’s a friday night—not likely.
the orchestra is a state of being, an illusion. each performer has no past and hardly any future, just a shuffling offstage once the conductor takes his last bow. everything is a present.
except you, a surprise in the third row, in front of the french horn players, next to the two bassoonists. i must confess i was looking for a familiar face. and there you are: a remnant of my pre-college years and also of last weekend, at the hockey rink. i can’t see your saxophone—the violins block it from view.
i wish i’d never noticed you. the illusion’s been spoiled. i know too much about you. i know too much about us.
as the conductor takes the podium, one of the bass players shift and one of the tuning pegs hits the lights.
the music seduces me, and you are only an instrumentalist.
the woman playing the harp has Princess Diana hair.
the walk home is all uphill.
i dip below the surface of the water and glide, softly, turn under water just so i can feel the light brush of my hair against my bare shoulders. then again, a breath, hands to my eyelids to wipe away the water. i want to be able to see where i’m going.
up ahead the buoy floats, bear island its steady backdrop. i know the evening-lit lives of its inhabitants intimately, i have watched them on nights when i have to get away, when their party lights flit over the water toward me.
today, i am alone and lovely. behind me the waterfront bustles with swim lessons and girls stretched out on towels, waiting to tan their skin. i spread my fingers in the water and twirl, let the sky blur into one solid blue.
this is what i want. freedom, again. summer, water, air.
we go to breakfast. the two of you talk about your lives.
i drink my water, and pretend i don’t exist.
it’s so very, very easy.
i am hurtling along forward into this inevitable something, which i reach for and reach for but am too scared to actually grasp. i am choosing these paths and am being given these decisions to make and i, in myfinite youth, come to all the wrong ones. as i stumble i learn about that deep hole in the ground, and i grow to fear it, and i work to pull myself out of it. that hole will still be there, but i will build myself machines that will carry me over it. i will build my walls too high so that i cannot find it. i will cage myself in, and forever avoid it.
or.
or i jump directly in, and learn to love the darkness, work with the darkness, and make it clean and bright again, the way it was when i was younger and we dug holes in the sand to pour water into. all of these decisions i make, the ones which lead me in the wrong directions—they are the decisions which create webs, colanders to sift through the world. to catch the parts of me which have become weak, so that i can start to rebuild my own strength.
this is a decision i must make. i am terrified of both outcomes.
i’ve been working out while you’ve been in new york city, visiting your girlfriend, so when we start i suggest we run instead of walk. we both gained the freshman fifteen in college, so it’s a glorified walk we’ve been doing, the few times we’ve done this since the summer started. i take off like a shot when you agree. your whoa, girl shouldn’t get my heart racing like it does, but by the time we reach the agreed stopping place i’m much more out of breath than i should be.
when we get back to our street you double back for a second and stomp on a leaf a few times. i say, what? what are you doing? and you say, i like the crunchy leaves. i wasn’t going to step on it, but then i did and it crunched so i had to go back. i punch you in the arm, laughing. when i fix your phone you say, you are so awesome, becca and our fingers brush when i hand it back to you.
it’s been so long that i don’t even feel a tingle when you touch me. i’ve been at this for years. my skin knows how to deal with yours.
still, i wonder. is this just habit?
“you’ve changed,” luke says, standing in line at the snack bar, “he’s changed you.”
we’re talking about the boy who is liking me back, who is maybe going to kiss me sometime, who has asked me to go to prom with him. i am still in my euphoric stage, when the world is brighter because he’s in it and because, yes, he’s as interested in me as i am in him.
but luke’s words feel like a cold dash of water along my spine. i try to keep my smile up. “what do you mean?”
“i don’t know,” he says, “i— blue doritos, please,” because he’s made it to the front of the line in the small room in the back of the high school cafeteria, and the lady behind the counter is waiting for his money. he hands her a few dollar bills and i step up to order cookies and then another friend shows up to say “hi” and the conversation is averted to another time. i never really get an answer. from then on, i can only see james’s flaws.
