Me, with my head on Tom’s chest: Your heart is beating.
Tom: What else is it doing?
Me: Nothing? That’s like all it does.
Tom, in a determined tone, quietly to himself: One of these days…
There was this unusual thing that would happen sometimes, back when Tom and I were long-distance and we were finally having a visit after months of not seeing each other.
The unusual thing was that, a few days into a visit, we’d be lying in bed, gazing into each other’s eyes, basking in each other’s physical presence… and, unexpectedly, the words “I miss you” would surface in my mind, clear and absolute.
I remember I would always feel baffled when this happened, because it wasn’t “I missed you.”
It was definitely “I miss you.”
Why should it be those words, present tense, when he was–finally–right there?
It wasn’t until I’d lived with him for over a year that I eventually understood two things.
One, that I am exceptionally introverted.
Two, the voice that was saying “I miss you” was the deepest part of myself speaking not to him, but to me.
I think that all the most likely versions of my life contain a void.
In January, in about a week’s time, I produced two final essays for the first semester–4,683 words in total.
It was utterly grueling. I had little choice, though, and I did manage to do it. And my final marks were excellent.
But something I can’t easily forget is this: the day after submitting my last assignment, I was sitting at my kitchen table, still wrung out from lack of sleep and feeling as though my brain had been run over by a truck.
And I just kind of dissolved into tears.
Tom was startled. I was, too. Still crying, I tried to explain. “Sometimes… when you get to the end of something you’ve been working really hard on, you don’t feel happy, you don’t feel relieved. It feels like…” I remember making a fist over the center of my chest, and then drawing it away: a wrenching motion. “Like it took something from you.”
Thanks for asking!
A lot of my poems and written bits are written especially for the LGBTQ community or to empower women. While I feel everyone should be free to interpret and feel those poems the way they want, I find it kind of hurtful and disrespectful if someone does an edit for a heterosexual couple or gays, using one of my poems that were written specifically for lesbians and changing the pronouns just to fit their pairing.
Thank you so much; I love your answer. I knew it wasn’t a case of you not being open to queer interpretations because your work is extremely queer-inclusive (as well as being inclusive to other minorities). I wish I had expressed that in my original ask, but I am glad you understood what I meant and I appreciate your answer =]
Last night, for a little while, I found what I am endlessly, desperately searching for: the present.
There it was, in a certain late-autumn evening light, the tree silhouetted against the sky, absolute silence, the weight of his body on top of mine.
That was it, that was all. And it was everything.
“Maybe it’s really this easy,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “We just have to take it.”
