Please stop trying to le.., p.17
Please Stop Trying to Leave Me, page 17
Where’d you come up with that name anyway?
Frankincense I
After my freshman year of college, after the infinite man, I remember thinking that love was like a bird. I was young and willing, back then, to fall in love. I think my willingness came from a belief that I too, like a bird, had wings. Or maybe, that love is what would give me the wings. To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what I believed, but what I do remember is that every day I wore a necklace: a long gold chain with a singular bird charm at the end of it. The bird sat directly over my breastbone, perfectly positioned like armor over my heart. I’m not sure where I bought the necklace. Likewise, I’m not sure where the necklace went or flew off to. It left me sometime in college. Perhaps, back then, I thought that love was a bird, because it always flew home. Even without a map. It simply felt where home was and traveled toward it, soaring on and against all elements to get there.
Cassia I
Two months ago, I changed my settings on Hinge.
Frankincense II
These days, I don’t often think of love as a bird. Truthfully, I haven’t thought of love this way in years. I had even forgotten that I once believed these things until today.
Ginger I
This morning, over hot water and honey, an old friend from high school who had the tendency to turn all the straight guys curious tells me on the phone that fear is the weakest of all the emotions. Truth, he goes on to say, es la gran cosa.
Cedar I
In high school, Emily Kavanaugh didn’t tell her friends about Rachel from Massachusetts. Emily never told them that Rachel’s favorite snacks were, and would always be, Oreos, or that if you asked Rachel to make a baby dinosaur sound, she would perform a tiny squall that could make anyone in the room laugh, even those put off by her buzzed haircut. Emily didn’t tell her friends about Rachel, and so she certainly never told them:
Hey Rachel, I’m falling in love with you.
I had spoken to Emily only once before, but of course, I knew her name. Everyone knew her name. She was popular and beautiful like women in the magazines. When we were both sophomores, I was standing in front of her in the cafeteria line, and she asked me if I could hold her spot. She ran over to her boyfriend, who was the star of the water polo team, and kissed him. I watched as he grabbed her butt, as other girls in the dining hall who were also watching wished to be her. I quickly turned away as Emily came running back into the line, out of breath, and thanked me.
Senior year Emily was still dating the water polo star, and I was on the library computer working on my college applications. When I opened Safari, Emily’s Facebook popped up, still logged in. I knew what the right thing to do was, but still I went to her messages. That’s where I found out about Rachel, the girl she had met on her summer vacation to the Caribbean. I saw their messages and the photos they sent to one another: of the two of them kissing in bikinis on a white sand beach.
Emily, That was a close call yesterday with your boyfriend. This sucks. But one day I know we’ll be together.
Ginger II
To my old friend over the phone:
Doesn’t our fear come from our past tragedies?
And what is the greatest tragedy?
When I don’t answer, he asks:
Who is he?
Cinnamon II
One night, I walked over to my sister’s room and told her what I had found on the library computer. Maybe she could help me understand. But after I told her, my sister only said:
If Emily’s parents find out, they’ll burn her alive. They didn’t bring her to America to be gay.
I wanted to tell my sister that Emily was white, and I was pretty sure her great-grandparents had owned slaves. But I didn’t say these things. Instead, I nodded and took note.
A couple of mintues later, my sister said,
Good night. I love you.
Cedar II
After that day in the library, I would sit in the dining hall with the few friends I had made from honors English class, but I wouldn’t talk very much. Instead, I’d watch Emily from across the room. The way she lunged over the table to whisper a secret into her boyfriend’s ear. The way her friends and his friends would cheer and coo when they kissed. It had been this way for two years, but now, knowing what I did, I couldn’t stop seeing Emily’s secret woven into every one of her movements. One day during Spanish class, Emily sat beside me. Our teacher was running late, so kids sat on each other’s desks and gossiped, or texted on their Sidekick phones. Out of the blue, Emily turned to me and asked:
Can I count the beauty marks on your arm?
I nodded. She began:
One—two—three—
As she counted, she touched each beauty mark. Beauty marks that I always called freckles. As she touched my skin for the thirty-sixth time, our teacher walked into the room and class began.
Myrrh I
Every day before sitting at my desk to write, I light a stick of palo santo. Some mornings I light the palo santo and, for a long time, I sit there and watch the flames engulf it. The fire circling, twisting, rising. The orange flame, for the briefest of moments, becoming still and revealing the purest red in its center. Sometimes, I feel the urge to touch the blazing stick to the furniture, to the bookshelf, to the walls, to the bed frame. I imagine sitting back and watching the room combust, witnessing the fire grow. To not have to contain it. To not have to be afraid of what it is, what it can do, and what it will do to me. This morning is no exception. The fire is burning. I can smell it in the air.
Myrrh II
Before this week, if someone asked me what, if not a bird, was love to me, I would have said fire.
Cassia II
Two weeks ago, I swiped right.
Cinnamon III
When my sister was pregnant with her first child, I took the train and visited her and her husband’s home in Connecticut. I didn’t tell my parents that I was in town. I decided it was easier not to. The first night I was there, my sister and I sat on her couch. She took out her at-home ultrasound device and pressed the wand against her stomach, looking for the baby’s heartbeat. She searched patiently until she found the sound waves emanating from her womb.
My sister said:
It sounds like a girl’s heartbeat, doesn’t it?
I didn’t know what she meant, so I asked:
Is it? A girl?
We’re waiting until the birth.
I responded, saying:
Well it doesn’t really matter anyways, right? They could grow up to be transgender or gay or be a girl who likes sports. You never know.
My sister’s face suddenly shape-shifted, and she stood up from the couch, glaring at me with her naked belly a foot away from my face.
Why would you say that? My child isn’t going to be gay.
And then she stormed off into the other room.
Cedar, Cinnamon, and Myrrh I
Today, when I think of fire, I think of Emily’s parents burning her alive and the terror in my sister’s face when I told her that her own child could be gay.
Cinnamon IV
When my first niece was born, my sister named her after my mother. I drove in from New York City to meet her. At the hospital, I cried when I first saw the baby. As I held her that day, I remember hoping for this tiny little human’s sake, this little baby who could barely open her eyes yet, that she would be exactly what my sister and brother-in-law hoped for her to be. I kissed my niece’s forehead and then I whispered in her ear:
But no matter what, Auntie will always love you. Can you hear me? No matter what.
Cedar III
Later that day, I drove to Starbucks to get coffees for the whole family. As I walked toward the entrance, I saw a blond woman holding a man’s face, kissing him on the sidewalk of this picturesque little town that I grew up in. The diamond wedding band on the woman’s finger glistened in the light. When their kissing faces parted, I realized it was Emily and her water polo boyfriend. I quickly ran into the Starbucks. I’m not sure why I did this. It wasn’t as if they would remember me, the shy girl who spent a lot of time in the library. When the couple left in their own car, I walked back to mine with a trayful of Starbucks cups, wondering if Emily still talked to Rachel. If she ever saw her again. If she missed Rachel or herself more. But maybe this was presumptuous of me. Maybe Emily was happy and missed no one.
Ginger III
An hour ago, when my friend on the phone asked what I believed the truest tragedy was, I wish I had said: the truest tragedy is our inability to admit what we’re feeling; the way we hide, even from ourselves. Perhaps, without even saying it, this is what I said.
Ginger IV
To this day, I have never admitted to my friends that I have never cum with a man.
Until today, I have never admitted to myself that I have never cum with a man.
Cassia III
Two months ago, I changed my settings on Hinge. Two weeks ago, I swiped right. Yesterday, I met her for the first time.
Cassia IV
Her skin was brown and tattooed. Her hair, bleached blond. Her eyes, amber and piercing with an intensity I hadn’t known from her pictures. The spring sun was shining on us, but I was shivering. An hour in, She turned and straddled the park bench we were sitting on. Her body faced mine. She asked me if I’ve ever told someone I was falling in love with them first. I said:
I haven’t. The guy has always said it first. And the longest a guy has waited is four weeks.
We both laughed.
You can’t know someone in four weeks! Never mind love them!
I agreed with her. Truly, at that moment, I agreed. Then I said:
Truth is, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually loved a man.
How about a woman?
My shivers suddenly turned to heat. The heat rose into my cheeks. In my silence, She looked at me, and I looked at her. At the very edge of her left iris, at the spot closest to her nose, there was a trapezoid-shaped cutout of light, light brown, almost yellow. In her eyes, a crack of sunlight amidst the darkness. Her and I both stayed there staring at one another for just a moment too long; a second too poignant for either of us to conceal. In my chest, where that golden bird used to hang like armor, I felt that missing something, that thing I once felt but couldn’t admit to, rise and give birth to itself.
Cassia V
Last night, after we left one another, we spent four hours on FaceTime, and I watched her smile under the purple lights of her bedroom.
Cinnamon V
A month after my niece was born, I was feeling guilty, so I called my sister to apologize for what I had said when we were listening to the heartbeat. I told her that she was right, that it was a girl. My sister said:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Deciding to let her erased memory live in peace, I changed the subject to a new animated movie that had just come out. It was a kids’ movie, but I told her she’d like it. Then she said:
Remember when we were kids and you said you had a crush on Jasmine. Good thing you grew out of that.
And then she laughed.
Myrrh, Cinnamon, and Cassia I
Today, I awaken, and She is the first thing I think of. To keep from texting her, I wash my face and sit down at my desk. Though I cannot, my writing this morning says it all. My hands, here on the keyboard, have hesitated to give her a name, but She has appeared between every disjointed metaphor. My mind cannot think of anything to write of except of love, and as I write of love, I think of her. To the scent of burning wood and the sunrise of Manhattan, I realize that I’m doing what I’ve never done so soon. I’m doing, perhaps, what I have never done at all. Still, I can’t tell her how I feel. How can I after all we said yesterday? How can I when Emily is married to a man?
Ginger V
Another tragedy, in the midst of many tragedies, is finding yourself falling in love with someone while speaking of the impossibility of such a thing. Another tragedy is letting someone go because you’re scared of how they make you feel.
Frankincense and Myrrh I
Most people know that a phoenix dies by bursting into flames and finds new life by rising from its pyre. But what I learn today at my desk is that when a phoenix rises from its ashes, it returns to itself only to live another cycle of life, another five hundred years. It is said that only one phoenix exists on earth at a time. And so it is said that only once in five hundred years, a fire, unlike any other, can be witnessed. I wonder what it looks like when the phoenix sets fire to itself. When its desire for rebirth finally overcomes its fear of death. Fear: the weakest emotion. The cause of the truest tragedy, like not being able to say what I really feel. You’re a woman, I just met you, and I think I could, like none of the others, love you. I wonder if the bursting of oneself into flames hurts just as much as being burned by someone else’s fire.
Myrrh III
Every day I light the palo santo at my desk, and I sit there watching the elements, like a person, dance around the wood. For a moment, I get lost among them. I would like for this moment to last forever. But eventually, I blow the fire out. Most likely, I blow it out before it’s necessary, because I don’t want to get burned. I’m cautious. I always have been. I have been taught to be since I was too young to know what a crush really meant. Though I didn’t know what was happening, I remember my skin aflame. My organs, my heart, in ashes. The ashes blowing away in the wind like a bird but with no wings. Today, I wonder where my ashes settled. I wonder if they somehow silently found their way back to me.
I never gave my heart a map, but maybe, like a bird, it could just feel its way back home.
Pyre I
Today, if someone asked me what, if not a bird, if not fire, is love to me, I would most likely say, surrender.
Pyre II
When I finish writing about love this morning, I go on Facebook. Back in high school, this is where everything happened. Now it’s just a scrapbook for wedding, baby, and funeral announcements. I click to begin a new message. I type in my sister’s name. Her profile picture pops up with her, her husband, her daughter, and her new belly. This time around, my sister wanted to know the gender. Another girl. In the message box, I write: I like girls. I always have. I’m telling Mom and Dad tonight.
Then I go to type I’m sorry, but I delete it.
Instead, I write I hope you’ll still let me see your daughters.
And as I type this, I feel tears on my cheeks.
Pyre III
Before the phoenix surrenders itself to its own fire, it creates a nest it will burn itself atop of. It collects items to make this deathbed, which will then become its own womb. It dresses the nest with wood and spices like myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, ginger, and frankincense. Once the nest is made, the phoenix bursts into flames. When its bone and marrow are completely burned, only ash remains. Legend says, from the ash, a worm grows and from that worm, another phoenix “miraculously” rises. There is no prescribed time before one rises again. There is no warning sign or incubation date. Perhaps the process of rebirth is ignited in the simplest of moments: the adjusting of a dating app setting, the vision of a particular woman’s smile, a singular swipe right, and the courage to type hey. Or perhaps it begins when two pairs of eyes meet for just a moment too long, revealing a crack of sunlight that can no longer be denied or forgotten. Perhaps there is an art we must learn from the phoenix. The art to fearlessly choose for ourselves. To choose when we finally let go of the past and allow ourselves to be reborn from the fertile ashes of who we once were.
Ashes I
To the scent of burning wood, I click Send and close my laptop. I pick up my phone and go to her name. I write, I can’t stop thinking about that moment yesterday. I see three dots appear on the screen. And then, I can’t either. Maybe four weeks isn’t that long.
THE STUDY OF OBLIVION
twenty-four weeks since breakdown
You see, to look into a mirror is not always enjoyable—
Next stop Twenty-third Street.
Ugh. I roll my eyes. This conductor keeps interrupting me. I try to ignore the sounds and continue:
—Often when we look at the mirror, we don’t see the face before us. We see only the mirror itself. Frequently, this is the case because we are in a rush. Other times, we choose not to look, because we have been taught that our faces will have something wrong with them and they will be ugly. So we’d rather turn away.
Her response: I would have to argue with you, though, because I look in the mirror every day to do my hair or my makeup or just to brush my teeth.
