happy belated anniversary

april, 2025 – new york

i’ve posted and unposted this a few times now. namely because i don’t feel like it’s totally finished. too, because it makes me sort of sad. that said, it’s been burning a hole in my literary pocket for a while, and i figure now is as good a time as any. i meant to get it back up on the first of this month, but forgot. oops! unlike me to be late for a celebration. then again, what is there to celebrate? our slow and sexy demise? do we cheers to that?

i wonder what you’ll think when you read this. if you’ll remember these first two inseparable weeks like i do. if those feelings will creep back in – the ones from when we could still stand each other. dare i say liked each other.

i wonder if you miss me and the way we were in the beginning. i sort of doubt it.

i told my new therapist i don’t feel like you really know me. she nodded thoughtfully and said you’ve only ever known me as well as you know your favorite gas station. i’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. she might not know what she’s talking about. then again, she could have just offered up the most epic piece of thought-porn i’ve ever received. 

am i your favorite fuel pump? do you love my burnt coffee?

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april, 2020 – duluth

i was nervous to visit you at your apartment. it had been so long since i’d spent intimate time with someone other than my ex. i wasn’t sure if you were really into me or if you were just bored. i wasn’t sure if i was really into you, or if i was just bored. i was advised to not worry about it, and so i tried not to worry about it. i hadn’t expected things to develop between us the way they did. by “things” i mean feelings of love. i have feelings and thoughts of love for you now in a way i didn’t two weeks ago.

i like it when we look at each other and don’t say anything. i like it when i want so badly to touch your hands, your shoulders, your face. i try hard to hold back sometimes because i like it even more when you reach for my hands, my shoulders, my face. i like the way you touch me. i like it when you touch me in the ways you touch me.

we repeated a phrase about how every moment of our lives lead us to each other. the temptation is to wonder why, but why isn’t so important in the present. i was trying hard to stay present with you. but then, after a handful of days, my mind started to float. when i figured easter was just around the corner i began thinking of last easter and how it was the last time i saw my mother alive. those are dark and heavy thoughts and they have the capacity to suck me into a dark and heavy space.

then i drank an entire bottle of red wine and organized your closet for you. you were messaging on your phone a lot while i was doing it and i was acutely aware of this. i wondered who you were messaging and if maybe i should have been paying more attention to you and why does it really matter what your closet looks like. i think i just needed to fix something. or, rather, fixate on something. but then i was finished with the closet and you were still messaging on your phone so i went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette and found myself in a real pissed off mood. i wanted to keep you at a distance from the mood. i wanted to keep myself from being pissed off at you. i was a little drunk. you came out and sat and smoked a cigarette and neither of us said a word. i watched you bring the cigarette to your mouth and watched the smoke gather around you. i thought that you have a beautiful mouth. i blew the secondhand smoke away from me. i did this quietly, discreetly, as if you knowing i was blowing the smoke away would offend you. you reached out and put your hand on my leg after what felt like forever. i stood and kissed you. we laid down not long after and you rubbed my back. i felt terribly devastated in that moment. i felt bad you were rubbing my back. i felt bad for the deep, dark mood i was in and i didn’t want it to make you think differently of me.

we drove to grand marais earlier in the day and it felt so sweet. we sat in your jeep near the shore and watched the water move and time pass. you had beer and i had some wine. peppers and hummus. i fed the seagulls pretzels and you took a video of it from inside the jeep. there was a light snow coming down. i drove the car back to duluth and you said you liked the way i looked driving it.

i love looking at you in the jeep. so boyish and charming. too, i love looking at you across from me and in the park and also when you were doing the dishes in my kitchen while we were in minneapolis. your face is so dynamic in its shapes. it strikes me.

there were moments when i felt for sure you like me. and there were other moments when i felt you were simply very sophisticated at pretending. that you’re just one lonely son of a bitch. i am still debating on this. again, i have been advised not to worry about it. i have been told it doesn’t matter. and i guess maybe that’s true. the heart wants what the heart wants regardless of if it’s right or wrong.

i like sitting with the sun on our faces on the shore of lake harriet. i like walking past the nice houses and talking about them with you. i could have walked around looking at houses and talking about them with you until my feet bled. it was sweet to watch you run with beau in the park. and to sit on your lap in the dark on the edge of the little pond at powderhorn with the streetlights around us but not on us. we laughed and watched the ducks in their mating frenzy. i thought then that we have a lot in common with those horny little ducks.

seeing you live in my space and seeing you live in your space. watching you hold the ladder for your upstairs neighbor, nick. when mc and niki b came over real drunk on truly and then we joked about truly for a long time. rubbing the back of your leg with my foot that night by the fire. the look on your face when i jokingly told you i have my clit pierced just before you saw my vagina for the first time. the look on your face when the jeep started on the first try. the looks were quite similar. i like that about you.

i wonder if it might be all over now. if it was meant to be short-lived and now i have your guns n roses t shirt and you have my rayban sunglasses and that’s the end, that’s what we walk away with. i wouldn’t hate you for it. it would be sad.

i daydreamt about you and my brother fixing up a house all summer and into the fall. the fall in new york is so beautiful and long. i thought if only you could see it you would love it and then maybe you’d love me too. the image in my mind was of the two of you lifting things and sanding them and painting. i’d make delicious food and work on a garden and clean up around the place. we’d sleep hard at night with the windows open, the sounds of chirping in the yard like a sort of lullaby. the days would be long and sunny. beau would sort of half chase things the way he does.

beau’s asleep on the bed now. the bed where you and him were just a few nights ago. where we had sex so many times i lost count. when you came in my mouth and i came with your face between my legs. those, too, were good moments. could it all have been so temporary? or is there more to this story? what do you want from me? how am i supposed to talk with you now? how do we move forward in a way that makes sense after such an intense beginning? i don’t have a good answer. try not to think about it too much, i’ve been told. try to tell myself it’s not that deep.