my sadness stains the light. and though it filters in, it’s obstructed, broken up into little pieces, divided into halves, quarters, or eighths. i feed on the slivers, dance in their warm familiarity; i jump over the shadows on the floor, sway in the invisible cages they make. despite the seeming and makeshift momentary joy, the grief lies heavy underneath.
i do not recognize myself, it whispers.
i want my mom, it says.
my grandma is going to die, it pounds.
i turn around and fix my gaze on the bench by the wall. the bench is empty, half of it drying in darkness, the other half soaking in light. i move toward it, wanting to rest, finally close to allowing myself to, but then i hold back. my loneliness awakens easily, and my grief is always clawing at the base of my throat, desperate for some acknowledgement from me. once i sit, i will be reminded of the oceanic gap between myself and others, of the insecurities that make up my second skin, trapping me inside of myself and keeping me tucked away from anyone else’s love. once i sit, my grief will rise into my face and i will be pulled down into an abyss twenty-eight years in the making.once i sit, i will come face to face with myself and i’m scared of who i’m going to find.
so maybe i shouldn’t sit. maybe i should keep standing — or, better yet, walking. i’m really good at that. i’m really good at moving, moving, and moving and never stopping and always going, always going because if i’m always going then nothing can get me. but if i stop and slow down, slow down until i’m still and standing and only with myself — all my selves — well, i’m not ready for that just yet.
but the bench is made for two. someone else can come and sit next to me. and i know that Danny is around here somewhere, floating across the floors because his feet don’t always touch the ground either. he can come and sit next to me — and he’ll want to sit next to me, and i’ll want him to sit next to me, too. only i can’t allow myself the pleasure of that because if he sits next to me, he will want to hold my hand. and i know that as he holds my hand, i will be waiting for him to let it go because he always does. because he always leaves. because everyone always leaves.
but he can’t leave if i never let him come in.
so i won’t.
i about turn and stare up at the skylight instead, letting go of the bench and all the possibilities it could offer me.
the sky is bare blue and timidly-tinted with a little green, subtly soaked with yellow and gold. its placed behind parallel and dissecting lines of glass — and there are no clouds, just reflections of different bits of glass in other bits of glass. the afternoon sun is somewhere off to the left, somewhere in the distance, somewhere on its own just like i am beneath it. its light dissolves through the windows, slinks down the walls, rolls off the hundred-year-old paintings, and lands on my still face. i let it melt through my skin and glue me to the floor. for whatever now is i am here.
spring is different this year, nearly impenetrable. i wake up before the sun. i walk along the shore. i talk to the birds, but they don’t talk to me. two years ago, the white butterflies followed me. last year, it was the bees. this year, no one follows me except for me. i smile and say “hello” to strangers. i know everyone but no one knows me. i stop and smell the flowers: lilacs, dogwoods, cherry blossoms, roses. i bring their branches to my face, the flowers to my nose. they’re so body-meltingly sweet, but my head is dull so i can only access some twenty percent of their scents. i rise on my tip toes to get more of their fragrances, a familiar attempt to drown the entirety of myself in one sensation, but nothing comes in — i’m blocked. so, my feet fall to the ground and i start walking again.
i should go, i tell myself. i should move, but i can’t. my feet and legs are somehow so solid, so grounded to this museum floor. some of me is down here, and some of me is still staring up at the skylight. but some of me — a lot of me — is somewhere else and it’s my job to get them back.
i become so quiet as my identities reveal themselves. there’s the me looking up. there’s the me noticing my grounded feet. there’s the me observing both of those me’s. there’s the several dozen me’s from the past armored tight inside my body, incapacitated by fear, focused on protection. there’s the me trying to soothe them. there’s the me trying to get rid of the me’s from the past that are armoring me. there’s the me observing those me’s. there’s the me wanting to get rid of all these me’s. there’s the me trying to stop that from happening. see, i’ve never been bored in my life because it’s never been just me. me is plural — and, yet, it’s so lonely seeing things only i can see; i live in a world all by myself.
i’m one foot in this reality while several parts of my body are stretched thin across pasts of mine that i willingly disintegrate more and more with each day. i have very little to hold onto, and very little to define myself by, and yet somehow i’m still defining myself by things that i felt when i was a child. i remember everyone and i have also forgotten mostly everyone. if you call me by my name, i might take a while to register it as belonging to me. i’m not myself, and yet i am becoming most me i have ever been.
i miss my mom. i miss a past that doesn’t exist anymore. i miss my grandma’s in different ways, but i am still nowhere close to accepting what happened and what is happening. my older brother never came home and he owed me that, but, really, he didn’t owe me anything at all (no one does except for me). i’m a small and scared child in a big adult body. i intimidate men, or so they tell me. i wear a second skin of embarrassment beneath my performing top coat — and no one can even tell. my anger is leaking onto the floor, and sometimes people slip on it. i lean down and wipe their bloody noses, but then apathy takes over, covering up the rage, and i walk away. ‘that wasn’t real anyway’, i believe about nearly everything, but the blood on my hands says differently. i don’t know what i’m doing with my life and it isn’t charming. i wish i could stop walking for miles, but if i stop, i’m going to crash into my selves. i walk into every room with a pervasive feeling that i am unwanted. i move through life with death nipping at my face. i haven’t stayed still since i was 5 and yet i’ve been frozen in place all my life. i think i’m going to blink and miss myself, too. if i’m lucky, i won’t remember any of this. and if i’m not, well, we’ll see.
there is so much grief because the time passes and i can’t get it to stop. death has been ever-present since i was a child — a full-force cage around my heart, a deep awareness that everyone i love will die and it could be in a moment or a day or a week, but it’s coming and i can’t stop it, even if my occasional grandiosity thinks that i can. i almost died when i was born. then i almost died when i was five. after that, thirteen. then seventeen. twenty. twenty-three. and a bunch of times in-between. i almost died a million times and now little bits of me die every day to make way for some version of me that’s meant to be greater, better, lovelier. more likable, lovable, desirable. i watch all of this happen in the in-between lands, a bridge between the old me and the new me, and i wonder if all i’ll ever be is a widow of life.
danny’s hands swoop over my shoulders, palms flattening across my sternum. i gasp from the sudden touch. his cool, calloused fingers rest against my skin, but he can’t sink into it because there are a hundred layers of armor protecting my heart. my breath hitches in my throat.
“hi.”
there’s a smile in his voice. his heart beats into my spine, soft and steady, one. two. three. and four. then five. it’s a fisherman’s pace. i match its rhythm, slowing down my body to line up with his. his warm breath paces around my neck, looking for some contact, some part of me to brush up against. maybe he can unravel my trapped breath, pull on it like two fingers unraveling a knotted necklace. maybe then i can breathe more fully. maybe then i can lift up off the ground and soar toward the sky.
i’m no longer looking up at the skylight, but at the wall across, trying to find some point to land my eyes on.
“where are you?” he asks.
i don’t know.
where am i?
where do i want to be?
his words float toward the skylight; i reach my fingers up, hoping to loop into their hooks so that i can pull them back down to me.
where am i? who am i? who could i be?
a little smile, crooked because i’m in on my own joke, grows on my face. my hands reach behind me, wrapping around his waist, and pulling him closer into my body. i hear a breath of surprise, and i smile even wider. my fingers sink through his shirt and into his skin. i brush against his bones and thread through his fascia, looking to reach his heart, looking to find memories of me that may be buried inside. am i in here? where am i? who am i in here? what me’s will i find?
across the way, i see myself smiling and staring right back at me.
“hi,” she mouths.
“hi,” i mouth back cautiously. i still get momentarily startled when i see myself outside myself. it’s been two years since it started happening and i’ve only gotten slightly used to it. there’s never any warning. it’s just there i am.
her hair, my hair, is wild, unruly — golden curls spiraling outward like sun rays; her eyes, my eyes, glisten with joy; her smile, my smile, is unrestrained, meteoric. a soft, subtle power courses through her forearms, up toward her shoulders. her shoulders stand tall, her legs are long and strong, and her chest is relaxed, not a single layer of armor in sight. she tilts her head to the right, lips slowly curling into a playful smile as she waits for me to realize what she’s always known.
that’s where i am. the answer to Danny’s question is:
right
there.