and where are you?
16
you’re watching tv alone in your room. it’s your only choice even when we get home from school. i knock after you let me in. i wonder if you will again after this. i already know you won’t. not with the tv being the only thing keeping you.
“i have to tell you that i like girls and boys.” i don’t say it like that, but that’s what it means. you mute the program eventually, just not to make sure you heard me right. you look at me like you’ve always been a step ahead of me. like it’s junior year’s fault that i’m not keeping this to myself any longer, that i’m thinking about this at all, that God doesn’t have anything to do with it.
“it’s okay.” you unmute. “as long as you don’t date girls.” this is exactly how you say it. short, unsweet. it’s the wrong kind of everything to me. you let this silence join you and the tv at the foot of the bed. there isn’t any space left.
18
dad dilly dallies into another aisle when i see your shoulders go slack. i watch them for a while, wondering if lights ever flicker in a target. dad takes his time.
“i think i’m just gay.” you don’t look at me. us again, with that there is more than i let on air. i only know this because i’m looking at you. just like lights don’t flicker here, you don’t bat your eyes. your shoulders stay lax.
“she’s not in california, is she?”
i haven’t talked to her in a couple of months. “no, washington.”
we’re both relieved that i have no more reason to. we go and find dad together.
21
“hey, come in.” he’s late, but he’s here. tall, sinewy, dressed in a fitted sweater, forgiven. i try to figure out things we could do after the party, but i reserve them for myself. my cheeks aren’t giving me away if it’s the november air causing all this. “but please, take your time.”
i shut the door behind him and take his coat. “all this for a dog?” he asks, glazing over the sunflower theme in the living room as he makes a beeline towards the food, towards you. “hi, thanks for having me. it smells really great.”
“oh, welcome! don’t be shy, there’s so much left for you.” i easily know your hospitable beam from your enamored one. for the rest of the night, we match.
22
i can’t escape prayer meeting with you and dad hosting it over zoom every week, not when there’s only one wall between the living room and the office. we no longer have the church property we used to rent out. i never have anywhere else to be these days.
i’m an idiot who tunes in from the beanbag by the back porch, and you’re a deaconess who needs a drink from the kitchen. they always have us in their mouths, and you always just let them. it’s one too many times for me. you’re only getting water when our eyes meet and mine spill.
i don’t realize i’m wailing until you’re scurrying to close the office door before tending to me. “i’m not going to hell. i don’t get how you sleep at night believing that.”
“it’s not up to me.” you wipe the tears from my face again, and again, and again. even with the sun on my back, i still search for warmth.
oh, judas. you forget you’ve killed me before. it fucks me up that i’ll see you there.
i stay limp in your arms.
24
you join me on the couch the morning after i’ve come home from my professor’s pool party. i wonder more about you in relation to myself. i’m the age you were when you met dad.
before him, there was that hunk of a guy you’d been with. before this morning, i’d been in the company of my own. the only difference is that nothing had happened between me and mine. unless…?
“do you and dad sleep together anymore?”
you hold up your hand and cover your mouth. wait. gulp. set down your coffee. “no, not really. but i’m not complaining.”
not that i ever need to know any more than the minimum, but i ask, still, “why not?”
you, knowing exactly what i mean anyway, say, “eh, it’s too much work. i don’t care for it. we’ve had the three of you. we now have the dogs. basta.” you laugh like you’ve been waiting for this question. not for me to ask it, but for you to finally have an answer.
before me, you were me.
25
there’s a rainbow doormat design that ikea’s put out for the incoming season. summer, they’ll call it. i’m drawn to it for that fallacy only, but then i think about how i’ll move out someday, for the nth time. about first impressions, and knowing things, and learning as you go along. colors, semantics, whatever in between.
“whatchu think?” i joke, picking up the topmost mat and holding it in front of my chest. “for my own place.”
you shake your head and point to another design with your mouth. anything but that. “that’s too much, even for you.”
i scrunch my nose and put it away. “yeah, i’m a lot more subtle about these things.” vague fruit tattoo, muted and mismatched prints on my person, ginger by choice, people i ask you for advice on false behalf of my friends. all to your chagrin, yet i find you next to me in a beat. you examine the mat, hand running over the spikes, unflinching.
“you don’t have to be.”
i stand still for a minute and imagine the mat in its worn form. loved through change, changed through love. at my place, at yours, as the last thing left of this state in the apocalypse. it’s everything to me—right, wrong, just there. i am no longer in a rush, leaning into you as it dawns on me that you’ve never been in one. you’ve only been moving to meet me halfway.
you follow me to the rugs. i have everywhere to be with you.
originally published on my substack which has since been repurposed