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[writing-in-grey]

The Moon Chose You

I want to tell you a secret. You have to promise not to tell. Cross your heart, now hope to die. Are you ready? The moon can speak. Do you know what else? She wants to speak to you. You. The moon, that goddess of the night, wants to speak to you. But you are busy. You are unwinding after a long day at work. You just want to eat your dinner and watch this show in peace. Well, maybe just a few more episodes, and then you’ll hear what she wants to tell you. But now it’s 3:00AM and you have to be awake at 7:00. But it’s okay; it’s not like the moon won’t be in the sky tomorrow. She can talk to you then.

Do you remember when you thought the moon was beautiful? Do you remember when you used to stare at her and tell her that she was? Do you remember when you used to let her presence lull you to sleep, and when you told her you loved her every night before shutting your eyes? The moon remembers. You first told her you loved her when she was but a sliver of a crescent, barely more than new and nothing, and you told her you would love her always. Night by night she grew, and you loved her. But you were changing too. Or weren’t. The moon remembers when you let her presence lull you to sleep, and when you told her you loved her every night before shutting your eyes. And she remembers when you didn’t.

Do you remember the night the moon was full? No longer the sliver of the crescent with which you fell in love, but full and whole and radiant. Do you remember all the things you said to her? All the things you didn’t say? Do you remember what she told you? “I have always been this,” she said, “I was just covered in shadows.” But that was not the moon with which you fell in love. You didn’t have to say it for her to know it to be true.

She was full and whole and radiant, but you did not love her. Do you know what the moon did next? Were you watching? She pulled the shadows back over herself, sliver by sliver, hoping you would see her as you once had. Night by night she covered more of her radiance until she was no more than the barest sliver of a crescent once more. Do you love her now? Do you love her now that she has unmade herself, now that she is once again just barely more than nothing?

The moon is the barest sliver of a crescent but you are still unwinding from a long day at work; you still just want to eat and watch in peace. But tomorrow night the moon will not be in the sky. Tomorrow night she will be nothing. She will be new. And after she is new, she will not want to talk to you. And she will build herself up without you until she is full and whole and radiant, and maybe one day someone will love her every phase, even her fullness. Maybe then she will speak again, but it will not be to you.

[writing-in-grey]

[writing-in-grey]

I am currently 2,975 miles away from the home I share with my partner but he still just called me so we could make a joint decision about which laundry detergent to buy and if that isn’t love I don’t know what is.

[writing-in-grey]

As someone who primarily writes fictionalized autobiography, let me just say that it is a trap. It always starts with “I’m going to write a story about this person who hurt me so I can process those emotions” and invariably ends with “I should find this person on every social media platform that exists and follow them” and that is never ever what should be done. Ever.

[writing-in-grey]

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judicial warrant

administrative warrant

So sad that if you don’t know your rights they will abuse their power, fucking disgraceful

[writing-in-grey]

We Were Invincible

I met you my senior year of high school. You had turquoise hair and talked to me as if we’d been friends a lifetime. That first day, the day I met you, you told me we were going to the mall after school. The final bell rang and I got in your car, a Volkswagen Jetta older than we were, passed down to you from your sister, who had gotten bored of the plain white paint and spray-painted a Duck Hunt mural on the sides the way bumptious boys adorn their cars with flames. We drove with the windows down and the radio blasting, and even in your ancient Jetta we overtook every car we met.

I had never before walked into a building feeling like I owned the place, but that’s exactly what we did. We walked into the mall with our arms linked and our heads held up high, ready to take the place by storm. Seventeen years old with the world at our fingertips. We dressed up in lavish outfits, posing for each other and fitting room mirrors. We stuffed our toes into the highest heels we could find, strutting back and forth with our hands on our hips and drowning in raucous laughter. We even went into a photo booth, our arms draped around each other, making faces at the camera. When the mall closed, you drove me back to my house and parked in my driveway. The stars were out, and we lay on the hood of your car, talking until the wee hours of the morning.

That is what I think of when I remember you: high heels and photo strips and lying on your Duck Hunt car as we looked up at the stars. And, of course, that feeling – like nothing in the world could possibly touch us. Like we were invincible.

We became inseparable, you and I. At school, we were above the mass populace. We were smarter, we were more charming, we had our shit figured out. We were special. While the rest of the class continued to struggle with the assignment, we whispered and giggled in the back of the classroom, because we’d already finished. While the rest of the school had to each lunch in the cafeteria, we had special permission to eat in our advisor’s office, just us two. While everyone else got caught up in petty high school drama, we were off in our own little world, above it all.

After school, we’d spend hours at the mall. We’d have countless fitting room fashion shows, each trying to outdo the other. We’d search for the goofiest accessories we could find in the Dollar Store and model them for two-minute photo shoots. We’d race each other from one end of the mall to the other, weaving in and out of shoppers and ducking into alcoves to avoid mall security telling us off for running.

I don’t think I spent a single weekend at home the whole of my senior year. Friday nights we’d hole up in your bedroom, queue up some romantic comedy or other on your laptop, and paint each other’s nails. We even learned how to make fun patterns and designs. We’d stuff ourselves with ice cream piled high with syrup and whipped cream, stay up late, and sleep in later. 

Sometimes I’d have a change of clothes with me, but usually I’d just borrow something of yours when we finally did wake up on Saturdays. Then we’d head to Michaels and each find a craft project to work on, which we’d take back to your house and start in on with more romcoms playing in the background. That year I learned how to draw, how to paint, how to knit and crochet and cross-stitch and sew. We’d spend the whole day just crafting, half-watching movies we’d already seen or didn’t care about, and talking. Talking about anything and everything. About boys and school and all that drama we were so above. About our hopes and our dreams and our plans once we graduated.

Every other Saturday night, I’d help you dye your hair, which was ever-changing. We’d sit in your tiny bathroom in our underwear, covered in spilled color and trying hard not to choke on bleach fumes. Once I even let you dye my hair, but I picked a bad color and had to dye it back a couple days later. We got it right later, though, when I finally dared to try again.

The summer after we graduated was full of late-night adventures and sleepovers that regularly turned into two or three or even four nights in a row. Sometimes you’d text me at 10 or 11pm, asking if I wanted to spend the night. I will forever associate that summer with late-night drives down the deserted country roads between our houses, windows down, moonroof open, and music blasting.

The day you turned eighteen, I held your hand as you got your first tattoo: a purple butterfly on your wrist. Purple, our shared favorite color, the color of your walls and your bedsheets and half your wardrobe and, quite often, your hair. And a butterfly to symbolize your favorite quote: Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. You had that quote painted on your purple walls, and butterflies littered your life. They hung on your walls, painted or drawn; they decorated several of your t-shirts, skirts, dresses, even your socks; they adorned your wall-calendar and the cover of your journal; they were on your pens and the stationary that you only used for the specialest of occasions (which meant, of course, that not a single sheet had yet been used); and then there was the silver butterfly ring that never left your finger, not even for a moment. And now you had a purple butterfly permanently on your wrist, forever your protector.

I drew you a butterfly card for that birthday – sketched in pencil and filled in with soft pastels, the blues and purples blended together with my fingertips – and you hung it in a place of prominence on your wall before we left for the tattoo parlor. Sometimes I wonder if it’s still on your wall, one college dorm room and three apartments later. Somehow I doubt the card survived when not even the tattoo managed that.

We stood in your driveway on a scorching hot day in the middle of August next to your Duck Hunt Jetta, packed to bursting with everything you’d need at college. You stepped so close to me our noses were barely two inches apart, took both of my hands in yours, and said, “What distance?” You were still laughing as you slid behind the wheel of your car, slammed the door, and pulled out of the drive. I waved until you turned the corner out of sight, and you stuck your arm out of the window and waved back the whole time. Once you were gone, I got into my own car, parked on the street and also packed to the brim, and set off myself. Yes it sucked that our colleges were states apart, but I knew we’d remain just as close despite the miles between us. Like you said, what distance?

College was nothing like high school. It was loud and fast and full, and I was so very small and lost without you. I tried to make friends, but it seemed like every time I opened my mouth to say hello, everyone in my general vicinity would simply vanish, like smoke on the wind. I texted you every time I felt like crying, which was all but constantly. I asked you how you were doing, but what I meant was, are you still here with me? Are you still there to be my lifeline now that I’m finally drowning? You texted back that things were great. You’d joined a theater club and everyone in it was just so nice. They were mostly upperclassmen who had been friends for years already, but within minutes you were one of them. You said that you had bonded with three of them in particular, two junior boys and a sophomore girl. The girl and one of the boys had been high school sweethearts; you were sure they were going to get married one day, and you’d just love it if you got to be Maid of Honor. A wish you were granted, years later.

I tried not to text you every time I needed reassurance. I tried to give you space to be happy at your new school with your new friends. I knew all of that was important, so I didn’t blame you for no longer having time for me. But I still clutched my phone so tightly I thought the casing would crack, just waiting for a text to come through. I was sure that once the chaos that was the first few months of college calmed down, once you’d had time to settle into a routine, then you’d have time for me again. I could wait. I might have been drowning, but I would become a champion at holding my breath.

I even found my own group of friends. It felt like months before I did, but it was only a week and a half. I say I found them, but really it was the other way ‘round. They adopted me, just as you had. And they were wonderful, truly. There were three of them, just as you’d found for yourself. Natalie and Amelia were roommates. It was Nat who approached me first. She said that sitting alone in the cafeteria was “unacceptable,” and I was to join her and Amelia immediately – if that was alright with me, of course. They invited me to their room that evening, and, on a whim, I asked if I could bring along my own roommate, Penelope, to whom I hadn’t said more than two words in the week and a half we’d been living together. I don’t know why she came with me when I asked her, but she did, and the four of us just… clicked.

That night, once Penny and I had gone back to our room, turned out the lights, and Penny’s breathing grew slow and even, I texted you about my newfound friends. I was so excited I thought I’d surely burst, and I knew you’d be excited for me, too. I told you everything, from how we met to what we’d done all evening, and how we had plans to hang out all weekend, too. My fingers were trembling with the exhilaration of it all as I typed, and my thumb missed the “send” button three times. I watched as the words moved from the message box to the big blue bubble, as the word beneath it changed from “sending” to “delivered” to “read.”

I told myself I wouldn’t text you until you texted me, but I always broke first. I’d have some amazing adventure with my friends, or I’d get riled up about an annoying classmate, or I’d just see something funny I thought might make you laugh, and I’d tell you about it. Sometimes you’d answer – something short, like “haha” or “sounds fun” or “ok” – but mostly you wouldn’t. 

I tried to forget about you. I tried to lose myself in my new friends, these people who actually wanted to spend time with me. We spent just about every waking moment together, the four of us, making all sorts of fantastic memories. But still what I remember most about that time with them was my hand on my phone, waiting for you to miss me. And sometimes, finally, I would start to let you go, but the moment my fingertips were about to let go was always the moment my phone would ring. You were like a drug I would finally detox from my system, right before someone slipped you back in my drink.

I don’t think I’d ever been as excited for a school vacation as I was for winter break at the end of that first semester. Nor as anxious. I shouldn’t have been, but I was desperate to see you again. I tried so hard not to be, but I was. I think I just wanted to regain that feeling that you gave me, that invincibility, that feeling that I was important. I don’t know why no one else has ever been able to give me that quite like you did. Maybe it’s just because you were the first. But whatever the reason, I was like a child waiting for Christmas morning. Or maybe more like a lost puppy trying to get home.

I texted you weeks before school let out asking when you’d be home and if you wanted to get together. I’d been home for nine days already when you texted me at 10:47pm: “Do you wanna sleep over?”

I left a note for my parents and jumped in the car. The car thermometer said it was twelve degrees outside, but I put the heat on full blast, rolled down all the windows, opened the moonroof, and cranked up the music as I sped my way down the dark, slush-covered roads. I was about halfway to your house when it started to snow, snowflakes falling through the moonroof and drifting in the windows, the few that weren’t blasted immediately back out by the heaters settling on my hair and my eyelashes, but melting before they could do much more.

My safe arrival, despite my less than cautious driving in already unsafe conditions, was just more proof that, with you, nothing could touch me. I let myself in when I got to your house, as I always had. I didn’t even need to use a flashlight as I crept my way through the unlit hallways, so well did I remember them from the innumerable times I’d done this before, and I avoided all of the squeaky stairs as I made my way up to your room; your parents never minded me coming over late, so long as I didn’t wake them. When I rounded the corner of the stairs, I saw light spilling out from around the edges of your door, just like always, and that familiar light filled me the way the spirit of God fills some. I slipped in your door and shut it softly behind me, and there everything was – the purple walls, the butterflies, my sleeping bag and pillow tucked in a corner of the room. And you. You were lying on your twin-size bed, engrossed in your phone.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” you said, without looking up.

“Your hair’s brown,” I said.

“Hang on, I’m talking to Elizabeth.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay, no problem.” I don’t think you heard me.

One minute. Two. Three. I took out my phone and started playing a game, just so I wouldn’t have to stand there like a stranger in your room.

“Heeeey, what’s up!” Twelve minutes, but you finally jumped up and hugged me.

“Your hair’s brown,” I said again.

“Yeah, I decided to go back to natural for a while.”

“It looks good,” I said. “Weird, but good. I don’t think I even knew what your natural hair color was,” I laughed.

“Oh no, this isn’t my natural color, just a natural color.”

“Oh.”

“I was so happy you asked me to hang out,” you said. “I was worried you’d forget about little old me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Oh, you know, just with all the excitement of new people and places, who even has time to remember the little folk back home?” you laughed.

“I texted you a lot,” I said, “but I wasn’t sure if they went through a lot of the time.”

“I love how I don’t even have to reply but you still know I love getting your little updates.”

I swallowed, hard. “So, um,” I said, swallowing again. “Tell me about your friends at school.”

“Oh. My gosh. They are the best. Elizabeth and Benjamin just make the sweetest couple; they’re totally going to get married someday, but I told you that already, didn’t I? But even though they’ve been together longer, I still think me and Lucas are cuter–”

“Wait, you and Lucas are dating?”

“Um, yeah, where have you been?” you said, laughing again. “We’ve been dating for months. And, speaking of, guess who no longer has their V-card?” you asked, pointing at yourself with both hands. “I gave it to him after we’d been dating for a week. How. Great. Is sex?”

“So, did you just get home?”

“Oh no, I’ve been back for about a week and a half. It is so dull here; I can’t wait to go back to school. How did we survive here for so long?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. All this boredom really takes it out of a girl, you know?”

“Right, yeah.”

“Sweet dreams, then,” you said as you turned off the lights.

I unrolled my sleeping bag in the dark, arranging it and the pillow in my usual spot. I crawled in and stared at the ceiling, not remotely tired. I was barely settled when the blackness of the ceiling vanished, replaced by the soft blue glow of the screen of your phone. Through the semi-darkness I could hear the tik-tik-tiking of you texting, a sound that was still ongoing when I finally fell asleep at quarter to four in the morning, and even then I heard it in my dreams.

I woke up before you – not a rare occurrence, but usually we were up within half an hour of each other. Then again, we usually fell asleep around the same time, too; lord only knows how long you continued to text your new and better friends after I fell asleep. I dressed in the dark – the morning light blocked out, as always, by your heavy curtains – and played around on my phone for about an hour, waiting for you to wake. When you didn’t, I grabbed a book off your shelf and made my way downstairs, where I helped myself to some frozen waffles. When I finished the waffles, I stayed seated at your kitchen table and read. It was an hour and a half before you came down, and maybe I imagined it but you almost looked surprised to see me.

Once you’d finished your breakfast, I followed you back to your room, unsure whether or not that is what I was supposed to do. 

“Close the door, would you?” you asked as I entered.

I stood by the closed door as you stripped out of your pajamas and rummaged around in your dresser.

“Do you want to go to Michaels today?” I finally asked as you were pulling a t-shirt over your head. It was deep blue and featured a stylized fox face.

“Listen, I’m so glad you came over,” you said, “because there’s something I wanted to give you.” You pawed through the jewelry box on your dresser for a moment or two, then turned around to face me, your hand outstretched, palm up.

Sitting in your palm was your butterfly ring. I hadn’t even noticed that you weren’t wearing it.

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” you said. “I want you to have something special to remember me by, even when we’re far apart.”

The warmth of your palm against the tips of my fingers was such a sharp contrast to the cold metal of the ring as my fingers wrapped around it, taking it from you. It was heavier than I thought it would be. I slipped it on, internally crowing that you had given this ring to me, not to Elizabeth, not to anyone else, but to me.

That was when I noticed your wrist.

“Hey, what happened to your tattoo?”

“Oh, laser removal. I’m really into foxes now. It’s this thing Lucas and I came up with, where I’m a fox and he’s a bear. It’s so cute. I’ve got, like, fox everything now. See?” you said, tugging at the hem of your fox-face t-shirt.

I glanced down at the butterfly ring adorning my finger – so meaningful just a few moments prior, now little more than a small hunk of metal.

I wore your butterfly ring every day for four months. I would fiddle with it every time I was tempted to keep my hand on my silent phone, waiting for a text that was never going to come. That ring was my methadone, keeping my hands busy to help me kick my addiction. It worked, and it didn’t. I stopped reaching for my phone so much, but the ring became an addiction in and of itself, worse even than its predecessor. That ring symbolized my entire relationship with you – the friend I remembered, who loved butterflies and hanging out with me; and the stranger you became, so willing to throw away everything you’d cherished as soon as you found something –someone – better. That ring was so bittersweet, and possessing it caused within me such intense and conflicting emotions that I could not give up. The highs I felt when I looked at that ring were beyond anything I’d ever known, and the lows were so devastating I thought I was surely going to die. But the thing is they all came at once, those highs and lows together, so that each felt like the other, and I came to associate pain with pleasure, pleasure with pain. I had hoped, initially, that the hurt associated with your ring would help me to let you go; if I wore a constant reminder of the pain you’d caused me, surely I wouldn’t still yearn for your affection. Instead, I grew only more attached to you, desperate for you to love me again, yet still gaining some sick satisfaction when you’d inevitably wound me further. Each scar you gave me became, in my mind, proof of your affection.

After four months of anguish, I took off the ring. I no longer understood a single emotion I had, and I had long ago gone mad with longing. I didn’t know how to fix myself, but I knew that this ring symbolized everything that was wrong inside my head. I was walking back to my dorm room after class when I did it. I was walking over a storm drain, and I stopped. Both feet on the grate. I started shifting my weight from my heels to the balls of my feet and back again just to savor the feeling of the something-then-nothing beneath my feet. I remember thinking maybe shifting my weight like this was like folding a piece of paper back and forth along the same crease, weakening it until it finally rips. Maybe if I shifted my weight back and forth and back and forth for long enough, the bars of the grate would weaken and then snap, and I’d fall right in and disappear forever.

I don’t know how long I stood there, just shifting my weight between my heels and the balls of my feet, the rest of my body swaying almost imperceptibly with each shift, waiting to fall into the eternal void that surely lay just beneath the storm drain. I do know that at some point I stopped. Stood perfectly still, so still I might not have even existed at all. Maybe the people walking all around me couldn’t even see me anymore; maybe I was invisible I was so still. I was so still that even my thoughts stopped. For just a moment or two, my mind was a perfect blank, and I took a breath as I stood there.

Then I raised your ring, still on my finger, to my eyes. I stared at it for nearly a minute, and then I took it off. I crouched down on the storm grate. I took the ring between my thumb and forefinger and held it over one of the gaps in the grate. Time seemed to stop as I held your ring over an abyss, threatening to lose it from this world forever. I think I might have cried then, but I honestly can’t say for sure. I wasn’t aware of any tears rolling down my cheeks, but when the wind blew, it felt wet against my face.

I couldn’t drop it.

Time began again and I stood up and ran back to my room as though the Devil himself were chasing me, your ring clutched tightly in my fist. I flew into my room and slammed the door behind me, still not daring to stop and breathe. I strode across the room to my dresser, and the jewelry box sitting atop it. I flung the box open and dug through the tangled heap of bracelets and necklaces I never wore that lay within. I dug until I reached the very bottom, and there I placed the ring. I piled the old bracelets and necklaces over it again, burying your ring quite thoroughly. That is where I kept it from then on, hidden at the bottom of my jewelry box. Never worn, nor even looked at, yet still not thrown away.

I no longer kept my hand on my phone while out with my friends, but I still texted you whenever no one else was looking.

With the approach of each school vacation, I always told myself that I wouldn’t ask you to hang out. And as soon as I was back in my childhood bedroom, I would always text you to ask if we could. Every yes was the same: me, desperate to remind you how we used to be; and you, dangling me along on a string, gracing me with your presence but never your attention.

After a couple years at school, we each moved out of the dorms and our parents’ houses, and into apartments near our respective schools. Once you moved out, your parents even sold your childhood home and retired to a town by the ocean. I thought surely this was it, the end of you and me. After all, we only ever saw each other when we both went home for breaks, and, with the sale of the house I knew almost better than my own, you would never again have cause to return to the sleepy little town in which we met. I was devastated, and oh so relieved.

But, for reasons I may never understand, you were not yet ready to cut that string on which you held me. Instead, you encouraged me to drive up to your apartment on breaks. I would blast my music for the three-hour drive and arrive exhausted. The three of us – you, me, and Lucas, with whom you now lived – would sit on your couch for hours as you played YouTube videos on your TV, and every time I opened my mouth you’d say, “Shh, you’re missing the video!” Then I’d crash on your couch and drive three hours back the next morning.

We soon graduated college and got Real Jobs™, but not much else changed. You still texted me just often enough to keep me hooked on you, and I would still drive three hours up to sit silently beside you and your boyfriend and then three hours back about once every two or three months, whenever you had time for me. For years, this is how it was, and I was never strong enough to change it.

Then, I met a man.

It was my first time trying a dating website, and he was the first person I talked to upon signing up. The only person I talked to, actually. I messaged him because I lived in New Hampshire and he lived in California and who could be safer to talk to as I eased my way into the online dating pool than a man who lived three thousand miles away?

Falling in love with him was faster and easier than anything I’d ever experienced. A month after we started talking, I flew to California to meet him in person. By the time I flew home four days later, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him.

Nine months into our relationship, the lease on my apartment was up, my car was packed to the brim with all my worldly goods, and the love of my life was on a Boston-bound plane, preparing to be my co-pilot on a two-week road trip back to California and our first shared apartment. Here it was: the biggest adventure of my life thus far. All I had left to do was to say my goodbyes.

You said I had to see you before I left. Of course, I agreed. Luckily, your apartment wasn’t even out of the way; it was directly on the route we would already be driving. I told you when we’d be passing through your neck of the woods, date and time.

“I work Sundays,” you said. “Can’t you pick another day?”

“Don’t you get an hour lunch break, though?” I asked. “We can just get a quick bite to eat.”

“Saturdays are my day off,” you said. “Come up then!”

“But all our hotels are booked already. We can’t change them.”

“So just come see me on Saturday, go back and stay another night at your place, then start your trip on Sunday. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” I said, “is that we’re already going to be driving seven or eight hours a day, sometimes more, for two weeks straight. I can’t just add another six hours on top of that the day before, not when I’m already driving through that area anyway. Please,” I begged, “isn’t there any way we can make Sunday work?”

“I told you, I’m working.”

“Well then, you can come see me on Saturday. It’ll be fun; you never come to my place!”

“I would,” you said, “but I’m already driving down that way later that week. I’m getting a new tattoo! There’s a parlor that has great reviews just a couple towns over from where you are, actually. So I don’t want to do that many back-and-forth trips so soon after each other, you know? That’s just more driving than I think you realize.”

Saturday, the day before our trip was set to begin, you texted me: “So…?”

That was all you said. So much presumption in such a little word. The expectation that I’d move heaven and earth just to see you one last time before I moved.

I cried as I told you I would not. I told you I was sorry, that I wished I could see you before I left, but it just didn’t work out. You weren’t free when I was driving through, and you wouldn’t come see me, so it didn’t work out.

“I didn’t even know coming to see you was an option!” you said.

That conversation was so recent you barely would have had to scroll up to see it.

“I guess,” you said, “I’m just upset because I feel like I’m never going to see you again.”

It took me two days to respond to that message – two days for my fingers to stop shaking with anger, and with hurt, to be able to type. “I’m sorry you’re upset,” I said, “but let’s be real: I have never been a priority to you, and I am not going to put myself out now just to pretend to myself that I am.” I hit send, and my partner held me as I cried. I buried my face in his chest as I let out gut-wrenching sobs, and I felt his own tears fall into my hair as he bore witness to my grief.

When I finally sat up, wiping my puffy eyes on the backs of my hands, he asked me, “What do you want her to say back? How do you want this to go?”

“I don’t care,” I spat. “I don’t care what she says. I’m done with her, done with all of this. She’s never done anything to show me that I mattered to her, so I don’t care. I don’t care if she says she’s sorry or not; I’m just done.”

He squeezed my hand, not saying anything.

“No,” I said, “that’s not true.”

“Then, what do you want her to say?” he asked.

“Something,” I said.

My partner and I had an amazing road trip. We saw the New York City skyline from the George Washington bridge, and we explored Colonial Williamsburg. I met one of his childhood friends now living in Virginia, and he met one of my childhood friends now living in Pennsylvania. We explored the stunning botanical gardens in Atlanta, and a homeless man helped us change the flat tire we got as we tried to leave. We got caught in a sudden downpour as we walked the streets of New Orleans, as drenched the moment the rain started as we could possibly be. We drove through more ghost-towns than I could count, and we saw sun rise over the Grand Canyon. We stayed in 2-star hotels with comfy beds, free wifi, and free continental breakfasts, and we stayed in 5-star hotels with rock slabs for beds, $20/night wifi, and $15 plus 30% fees on room service. We played word-games to keep each other awake as we drove, napped in McDonald’s parking lots when that wasn’t enough. We drove through rain so thick we couldn’t see the taillights ahed of us, wind so strong it jostled the car, and skies bluer than I ever thought possible. And after two long yet incredible weeks, we finally pulled into the driveway that was ours-not-his, and parked.

“I guess that’s it then,” I said.

“Yup, home at last,” he said, knowing I wasn’t talking about the trip.

“Home at last,” I repeated.

“Still nothing?” he asked, glancing at my phone in my hands.

“Not a single word.”

“I’m sorry, love.”

“I didn’t want much,” I said. “I didn’t need her to apologize or say I was right. She could’ve yelled at me, called me names, told me she hated me, even. Because even if she got angry at me, you don’t get angry at people you don’t care about.”

He reached over and held my hand.

“She did the one thing she could’ve done to confirm what I said – that I don’t matter to her.”

“I know she meant a lot to you.”

I didn’t block your number from my phone, nor did I block you on social media (although I did remove you from my friends list). I don’t know why I didn’t block you. I think part of it is because I hoped you’d actually try to contact me someday. And I think part of it was because I knew you never would. And because sometimes, the only reasons I can remember for not messaging you are the two-hundred and sixty-one days and counting that you haven’t been blocked and have not said a single word to me. The truth is I miss you, and I’m not sure if that feeling will ever end. Because even though you were cruel to me for far longer than you were kind, still when I think of you it is of high heels and photo strips and lying on your Duck Hunt car as we looked up at the stars, back when we were invincible.

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Different

“You’re…different. I’ve never met a girl like you.”

She stares at him, hands stilling over her sword. “What?”

“All the girls in my village are so boring,” he says. “So focused on finding husbands that they don’t bother learning about the world.”

“Girls in your village aren’t allowed to own property or vote,” she says, somewhat incredulous.

He winces at her tone. Need she be so harsh? “Well…it’s not like they’ve ever needed to, we’re a very progressive village and I always vote in favor of their needs. You’re not like that though, you fight for your rights yourself.”

“They are fighting for their rights,” she says. She sets down her sharpening stone, a frown stretching across her face. “No voting, no property, no wages of their own to purchase necessities. Besides finding a kind husband, what else do you think they can do to find a good future?”

“Th-they could leave,” he says. He did not expect the conversation to go this way. He expected her to blush like she had when he complimented her sword skills. He finds himself oddly defensive. “The men in my village aren’t slavers. The girls can leave any time.”

She snorts. “On foot? Your village is a hard, three day ride from the nearest city and that’s by horseback. And, even if they made it, what skills do they have? What references? The risk is too high for any woman to leave, that’s as good as trapping them. The fact that it takes me holding a sword for your opinion of women to change just shows how small-minded you are.”

 He bristles, unable to refute her. “Look, I was just trying to pay you a compliment! There’s no need to attack me.”

“Trust me,” she says, standing when he moves to loom over her. They’re of near equal height and, if he was trying to intimidate her, he fails. “You’ll know it when I’m attacking you. This isn’t it.”

He doesn’t seem to hear her, flustered to be seeing her eye-to-eye. “Furthermore, I think I’d know what sort of girls I grew up with! They’re timid and lack a desire to explore the world.”

“The world you created for them doesn’t take long to explore,” she says. Her sword is bare in her hand. “Marry or descend into poverty. Bear an heir or be cast into poverty. Behave or be thrown into poverty. I was there for a week and figured it out. But,” she continues, looking him up and down, “maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. After all, you’ve lived there your whole life and you still haven’t figured it out.”

He splutters. “That’s not–there are other options–”

“When the revolution is done,” she says, coldly, “and your people are forced to give women rights, see how many stay and how many leave. See how many suddenly discover their wander-lust. See how many end up like me.”

She leaves him there and stalks off to the edge of camp. She leaves him there with his mouth opening and closing, and heart pounding in his chest.

She leaves him there with the unsettling realization that he doesn’t want the women in his village to end up being like her, so different and strong. Because, if they did, where would he be? Where would his home be?

It’s an upsetting realization to have, mid-revolution. No chance to back out now.

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My partner just accidentally overcooked his eggs, and he said, “Man, this egg looks angry now! This egg is totally metal!” and then in a metal voice he goes, “I AM EGG! FROM CHICKEN I SPAWN! WHO CAME FIRST? AM I MY OWN MOM? EGG EGG EGG EGG” and I am  c r y i n g

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This is my step-cat, Sushi.

I’ve always known she’s a super love, but recently I learned she tries to protect my partner and me when we’re sleeping.

I have nightmares all the time. It’s a problem, and has been for years. Some nights are worse than others, though. The other night was one such occasion, just absolutely horrible nightmares all night long. Often my nightmares wake me up, but this particular night I was too deep asleep I guess. But my partner ended up being awake most of the night, due to his own sleep troubles. The next morning he asked me if I’d had nightmares all night, to which I responded yes. He said he could tell because I was whimpering in my sleep, but I’d stop whenever he’d cuddle me. But, he said, Sushi noticed this, too. At one point I started whimpering again, and Sushi jumped up on the bed, lay on top of me, and started purring.

A couple nights later, I woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night to see Sushi lying between my partner and me in bed, with one paw across each of our legs. In the morning, I asked my partner if he’d been having nightmares too, which he confirmed.

Last night I had pretty bad nightmares again, and I woke up around 4 in the morning or so. I felt an odd weight on my legs, so I looked down and there’s Sushi, laying on my legs and purring to keep me safe.

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If you could meet any literary character

and ask them three questions, who would you meet and what would you ask them? (It doesn’t have to be high literature, just anyone from a book!)

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They are just unbelievable!

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Juan

His name was Juan, and you loved him. You loved how wide his smile was, and how brightly his teeth shone against his beautiful dark skin. You loved the sound of his laugh, deep and lyrical. You loved how the top of your head only came halfway up his chest, and sometimes he would use your head as an armrest before sliding his arm down and wrapping it around your shoulders. You loved how his eyes, the colour of rain-soaked earth, made you feel like maybe your own brown eyes weren’t as plain and unlovely as you’d always thought, and you loved how they never looked anywhere but directly into yours. You loved how the conversations you had in the small, seemingly forgotten corner that was the study hall classroom, the only space you ever shared, were always intensely personal. Not in content, but in the way you spoke. Every moment spent with him was fiercely intimate.

The first time he asked you on a date, it was like being hit in the face with a brick. It was like living your whole life as a fish and then waking up at the bottom of the ocean one day to discover you didn’t have any gills.

It was the first time you’d seen him looking like that – wide-eyed and small-mouthed. Like a dog with its ears flat and its tail between its legs.

“You want to date me?” you asked. He nodded. “N-no.”

And then you were alone in the hallway, alone with the not-quite-white and not-quite-teal floor tiles and the harsh florescent lights and the mural of the not-politically-correct school mascot, and what just happened?

You were afraid to see him again. He’d been so different, so timid and shy where usually there was nothing but confidence, and you’d said the wrong thing. You had made him disappear. You didn’t understand. Didn’t understand his question, didn’t understand his feelings, didn’t understand why your answer had made him run. You just wanted what you already had.

The next day, you approached the study hall door with fear rising like bile in your gullet and your breath trapped in your chest, but you opened the door there he was – wide smile and easy attitude, like the day before had never happened. Maybe it hadn’t. And when you spoke to him, he replied with the same sonorous voice, and when he laughed it was still lyrical, and when he looked at you it was the same piercing eye contact that made you feel as though he were the only person in the world who had ever really seen you.

The second time he asked you on a date, you thought he was joking and laughed, then asked him for help with your math homework. When he didn’t show up to study hall for the next three days, you thought he must be sick. When he finally did come back, he didn’t smile and barely answered when you spoke to him. He wouldn’t look anywhere near you for a week more, and you still did not understand.

It was quite by coincidence that Noah transferred into Juan’s and your study hall the day after you laughed. You were languishing without Juan’s companionship as he avoided you, so when Noah said hello, you latched onto his attentions like a drowning person to a life ring. He was in your German class, although you’d never spoken. But it gave you something to talk about, some small connection with which to forge the beginnings of a friendship. You soon learned you were both taking Algebra II as well, but you had it second period and he had it fifth. You were slightly better than Noah at German, but he was far better than you at algebra. Together you practiced verb conjugation and rudimentary conversation, and he helped show you how to solve for x and plot on a graph. He introduced you to Rammstein and South Park. He’d tell you jokes, and you’d laugh. None of your conversations were intimate, and his eyes always seemed to focus on your mouth.

The day Juan pulled up a chair and said he loved that South Park episode Noah was talking about, you grew so lightheaded you thought surely you were about to faint. His lips kept moving but your head was swimming and your ears didn’t seem to work. Your mouth went dry and your heart was hammering so hard it hurt and he was so close you could reach out and touch him if you wanted, but you thought your fingers might be fire and you didn’t want to set the peace ablaze. You tried instead to tell him without words how ecstatic you were that he was there again, but somehow his eyes always seemed to miss yours.

Study halls with Juan and Noah together were always more like study halls with Noah and not like study halls with Juan, but at least Juan was there. Even if everything you loved about your time with Juan before was gone, at least time with him existed at all. And still, every now and then he’d catch your eye and it was the same as before – just as fierce, just as tender, just as intimate.

Noah gave you his number so you could text him with any algebra questions. You had algebra questions. The class was on Chapter 10 in the textbook and you still couldn’t understand past Chapter 3. Sometimes he’d help you with your homework, or sometimes you’d just vent about how frustrated you were at the discordance between the amount of effort you put into understanding algebra and the results those efforts yielded. And sometimes you’d just talk about what happened in German class that day, or the latest South Park episode you’d watched. Sometimes you’d just tell each other about your day. It felt nice to have someone with whom you could have these conversations, even when you weren’t with them at school. It made you feel important. It made you feel like somebody actually cared. It made you feel like you had a friend, a real friend. Because you did. For once, you had a friend who wanted to talk to you past 2:30 in the afternoon.

We should hang out sometime. You stared at the text in awe, too shocked to respond for several minutes. It had been about two months since Noah had joined your study hall, and now he wanted to hang out. You had a friend who wanted to spend time with you outside of school. No one had wanted to do that with you since the sixth grade. 

Yeah, totally.

Cool, how about Saturday, my house?

And just like that you had actual plans to hang out with an actual friend. It was surreal, it was too good to be true. There had to be a catch, but you couldn’t find it. Every morning that week woke you in a cold sweat, the same nightmare replaying night after night.

In the dream, you would arrive at Noah’s house bubbling with excitement, thrilled to be hanging out with your for-real friend. But when you got there, all 683 students who attended your high school would be at his house – a hundred or so inside, the rest spilling out his front doorway and onto his lawn or hanging out of windows or sitting on the roof, all staring at you as you arrived, all laughing. Look at her; she thought someone really wanted to hang out with her! they’d say. She thought he was actually her friend! Dream-you would start crying, which only made them laugh harder, and you’d wake up with wet cheeks, feeling like you were about to throw up.

Saturday finally arrived, nothing but blue skies and sunshine. The high would be 76º, according to your phone. You washed the nightmares off your cheeks, brushed your teeth and hair, and threw on shorts and a t-shirt with a growing pit in your stomach, all but convinced your nightmares were mere hours from becoming reality. At the very least, you were about to discover what the trap actually was, even if your current fears were a little unrealistic. Or maybe you were just about to hang out with a friend. You tried not to let it, but that small thought spread, overshadowing your fears, getting your hopes up when you knew they were about to be dashed.

By the time you informed your mother it was time to leave and climbed into the passenger seat of her car, your mind was abuzz with questions and anticipation rather than fear. It’d been so long; what did people do when they hung out? Would it be like study hall, or would you do more than just converse? And what did people talk about besides homework? You couldn’t think of a single topic that wasn’t related to math or German, despite having talked (or texted) with Noah already about a wide range of subjects over the past month and a half, many of which had nothing to do with school at all. By the time your mother pulled into Noah’s driveway, you were a bouncing bundle of anxiety and thrills. No one was here to laugh at you, and you felt stupid for being so worried about such a scenario. In fact, all of the many fears your mind had so carefully cultivated over the past week seemed silly and faraway. Now you were only anxious about making a good impression, about knowing what to say and do during this casual hangout with your friend.

Your mother backed out of Noah’s driveway and he invited you inside. You removed your shoes inside the doorway and he told you your socks were adorable. They had cat faces on them and were indeed adorable. You said thanks and the vice you hadn’t quite realized was wrapped around your chest loosened a notch or two.

He gave you a quick tour of his house, asked if you wanted something to drink. No thank you, you said.

“Have you seen this one before?” he asked, slipping the DVD into the player, not showing you the title. Not knowing how to answer, you didn’t. You took a seat on the loveseat instead, your right leg pressed firmly against the arm of the sofa, the wool-polyester blend making your legs itch just a little. He joined you on the loveseat and pressed ‘play’ on the remote. You hadn’t seen Shaun of the Dead before, but you spent the entire film trying to figure out why his thigh was pressed up against yours when there was so much empty space to the left of him.

“What’d you think?” he asked as the credits rolled.

“Yeah,” you said. “Awesome, it was great.”

He asked you what your favorite part was, but began describing his before you had to answer. You made sure to smile and nod a lot, not taking in his words any more than you had the movie. His thigh was still touching yours and you still did not understand why.

Noah stood up, and you followed suit. You took a step back as well, regaining your personal space. He suggested you get some ice cream. It was only a mile down the road, he said, so his mother wouldn’t have to drive you. “No one to babysit us,” he said with a laugh and a twitchy smile. You didn’t want ice cream, but you were too busy wondering why adult supervision was a thing to be avoided to object.

That night as you sat alone in your bedroom, you could still feel his fingers slide between yours as you walked to and from the ice cream stand, and your lips were still buzzing from the kiss he’d given you goodbye. You’d jumped when his hand first made contact with yours, and he’d given a nervous laugh and grabbed your hand before it could jump away again. His palm was sweaty and his fingers felt massive and invasive between yours, and you hadn’t known what to say.

He’d ordered two soft-serve vanilla cones and paid one-handed. You took your cone and sat across from him at the picnic table behind the ice cream stand, but he got up and moved so your thighs were touching once more. His fingers were slightly sticky on the walk back, and you could still feel his melty ice cream in the valleys of your fingers even after you’d washed them.

Your mother was waiting to pick you up by the time you got back from the ice cream stand, chatting in the driveway with Noah’s mother. He didn’t let go of your hand.

“I guess this is goodbye for now, then,” he said as you joined your mothers in the driveway.

“Yeah,” you said.

“I’ll text you when you get home, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I had fun with you today.”

“Yeah.”

And then he kissed you. His lips were still cold from the ice cream and you were too surprised to even consider the fact that he probably expected you to kiss him back. Out of all the scenarios for which you had prepared, this was never one of them.

And so with sticky fingers and buzzing lips, you sat on your bed desperately scrolling through old texts as your phone was flooded with new ones, wracking your brain trying to figure out which words he’d used exactly when he invited you over, and how you had somehow unwittingly, unwillingly acquired a boyfriend.

You will never forget the last words Juan ever spoke to you: “How come you’ll go out with him but not with me?”

It would be years, nearly a decade, before you discovered the word “asexual” outside of a 7th grade science class, years before you understood the answer he stormed off before you could give, leaving you alone in the empty hallway with the not-quite-white and not-quite-teal floor tiles and the harsh florescent lights and the mural of the not-politically-correct school mascot, alone in the exact same place he’d left you alone when you told him no and you did not understand, except this time maybe you did.

That night you lay awake in your bed, whispering to the darkness that was not Juan, “Because you let me say no.”

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Check out my new site!

Hey all, head on over to my brand new website, writingingrey.com! I’ll be posting short stories there, and the first one is up and ready to read! Check out my story, The Ocean.

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The Ocean

When he meets her, she is an ocean.

He has always loved oceans. When he was a child, he wanted to live in one. People don’t live in oceans, his mother said. How would you breathe? But he still wanted to. He could find a way, he knew it.

He’d never seen an ocean before except in pictures. He lived in a desert, but he loved to imagine what the sand might feel like when saturated with water. His mother caught him pouring the contents of his waterskin on the ground once, and he was sent to bed without supper for wasting such a precious thing. But it wasn’t a waste. Before she had caught him, he’d actually felt the wet sand between his fingers, had held it in his hands, and despite his empty stomach, he went to bed satisfied. He would remember the feel of that wet sand forever, and one day he would hold it in his hands once more, whole fistfuls of it. And one day he would live in an ocean.

He is not a child anymore and still he remembers the wet sand he once held, yearns to hold it again. He tells his mother he is going to walk around for a while, walk until he finds an ocean. And so he walks. He walks for days and months and years, and when he gets tired of walking he sits in libraries and bookshops. He has read every book there is to read on the ocean, on its creatures and its plants, on ways humans have invented to travel on and in it. He has read them so many times he can recite them by heart, and does so whenever he feels anxious. Whenever he worries he might never see an ocean. He is reciting Creatures of the Deep and cursing the endless stretch of desert and the way sand always gets into his shoes when suddenly his right shoe is soaked through, his foot cold and wet. And just like that, there she is. An ocean. His ocean.

She is so tranquil and alluring, but he cannot see more than her surface from the shore so he takes off his shoes and socks and rolls his trousers up to his knees and he wades into her shallows. Every step he takes is careful and soft but still he causes ripples, an endless expanse of ripples. And with every step, every ripple, he discovers something new. The softness of the sand under his feet, for example. Or the seashells lying half-buried every few feet, just waiting for their unique beauty to be uncovered. He slips his favorites into his pockets and strokes their edges with his thumb. He wants to put them on his dresser when he gets home, that he might look at and treasure them always, maybe even showing them off when he has company.

He wades out further and further until he’s up to his chest in her, but he cannot stop and so he takes a breath and dives completely under. It’s difficult to hold his eyes open as he swims and he frequently has to rush back up to the surface to gasp another lungful of air, but there’s just so much to see, and he needs to see it all. There are crabs scuttling from small rock to small rock, raising their claws at him in warning. There are urchins crawling along on their spines, moving in ways it looks they should not be able to move. He sees anemones, their bright tendrils flowing in the current one moment, then retracted in an instant as he brushes them with his finger; he does not mind the sting. He sees sea stars of every color you could possibly imagine, and in some you can’t, colors that no one had ever discovered before, just as no one had ever discovered this ocean before. He sees schools of brightly colored fish swimming just beyond him, clouds of neon green and blue and red and orange he could see but never touch. But there’s more beyond his field of vision, dark shapes moving around that he can’t quite make out. He wants to discover them, but his muscles ache and his lungs burn and he’s chilled to the bone, and while he would not object to drowning in her depths, there is so much of her that he does not yet know and he wants, he needs to know all of her.

He has long ago memorized all of the boat-building books, and he builds a boat on her shore. A trawler. There are trawlers for sale, but he builds this one piece by piece. He shapes and sands each wooden plank and nail, making sure everything fits together absolutely perfectly, because this boat is an extension of himself, the one piece of him that can live in his beautiful ocean even if his body could not, and nothing but his best is fit for her waters. He works on the trawler during his every waking moment, save for the first and last hour of each day, which he always devotes to swimming as far and as deep as he can, exploring as much of her as possible, and at night he sleeps on her shore.

He does not count the days he spends building the trawler, but there comes a day when it is finished. It stands tall and proud, sturdy and seaworthy. It sits far up on the beach, beyond the in-tide’s reach (although the tide is not in now), but now that it is finished he heaves it slowly across the sand until it sits just within the water’s edge. He scales the side of the boat using footholds he built in for this specific purpose and stands on the deck, waiting for her to sweep him up in her arms, the rising tide.

When he and his trawler are swept out to sea and the shore becomes smaller and smaller until he can no longer see it at all and every which way he turns is nothing but ocean for as far as his eye can see, he finally feels free – no longer tethered to land, to the arid desert of his former life; it is as if he has died and been reborn amid the waves. He whoops and hollers and dances around the deck. He has food and water to last him several months, and fishing supplies and a desalinator for when his supply runs out; he has books and journals and pencils and pens. He has a scuba suit and a compressor to refill his air tanks every night. He has everything he needs, and he is never going back.

She is so different here, in the middle of the ocean, than she was when he was swimming from the shore. Her water is a deeper, richer blue, and the creatures swimming all around him are different and more, so much more. Only a handful of different species lived as close to shore as he was forced to stay, but here, here there must be hundreds of different types of creatures, or thousands. By the surface they are small and brightly colored, but the further down he goes the bigger and murkier they become.

He swims through huge forests of kelp, marveling at the size of each plant, all of which rose far up above his head to the surface and stretched down, down, down so that he could not even see their roots through the inky blackness of the waters below. Eels, long and slithery and kelp-colored, liked to lurk in the kelp forests; they would creep out unseen as he swam past and quick as a flash they’d wind their long, twisty bodies through and round his legs, so that they became a figure-eight, each loop of the eight trapping one of his legs, and then they’d squeeze him tight and try to nibble on his toes. But rubber flippers do not make a very good meal for an eel, and if they had human faces they’d scrunch them up with their tongues sticking out the way you would if your mother tried to feed you beets or Brussels sprouts or mung beans. But as eels do not have human faces to scrunch up with their tongues sticking out, they’d just shake their head two or three times, unwind themselves from his legs, and slink back into the kelp to find something tastier on which to munch to get the taste of flipper out of their mouths.

Past the kelp forests, he discovers huge hulking fish that look like boulders, but who had powerful jaws that would clamp onto unsuspecting passersby in an instant and never let go. They could close their jaws quickly, but everything else about them was slow, so if they missed with their initial sneak-attack their prey would escape before they could so much as open their mouths again and they would have to settle back into their clump of rocks and crank their jaws slowly open again and wait for something else to swim by. He is very nearly bitten by one the first time he comes across them, the fish’s massive maw missing him by a fraction of an inch when he twists slightly to look at a school of passing fish a few feet away. He is careful of all rock formations after that, and soon becomes proficient at detecting at a glance whether he is looking at rock or fish. Some days he brings bits of food with him and tosses them to the rockfish; then, while they are busy consuming his offering, he swims up for a closer look, and sometimes he can even stroke them for a time before they began to stretch their jaws wide again, preparing to strike.

There are giant cephalopods too, who are playful rather than menacing, although their play is often dangerous for him. They have many flailing tentacles, too many to keep his eyes on all at once, and they like to try to grab him with the ones he isn’t watching. They distract him with a mesmerizing dance, tentacles swaying like kelp in the current, or by juggling small rocks or shells or hermit crabs, and then a stray tentacle winds itself around his ankle and quick as lighting the cephalopod zooms through the water, dragging him behind. Sometimes they toss him like a child tosses a ball into the air for a game of catch with themselves, except the cephalopods have to catch him on the up-toss and drag him down again so they can throw him up once more since he is too buoyant in the water to fall like the ball. Sometimes he enjoys these games and laughs as the cephalopods make him their plaything, but sometimes they make him dizzy and sick, or his tank runs low on air, and he has to make a quick getaway the moment their tentacles are no longer wrapped around him.

Day after day he dons his scuba gear and plunges into the ocean’s depths, observing the eels and the fish and the cephalopods and more, observing everything there is to observe. He stays within her for as long as he possibly can, until his all of his air tanks are depleted of every last drop save what he needs to return to the surface. Some days he cannot bear to tear himself away and he stays for longer than he should, and he has to hold his breath for the last several struggling kicks to the surface, and he emerges gasping and panting and thrilled. Once he surfaces and clambers back onto his trawler, he carefully hangs up his wet suit, sets his air tanks to refill, and begins documenting his dive.

He writes notes on the behaviors of the creatures he’s seen, or how certain types of rock always form the same patterns, or how the currents were moving that day. He draws illustrations of any new creatures he’s seen, and diagrams of how he thinks they must work inside. He revises previous entries with new insights, often needing to completely redraw his illustrations and diagrams as he learns new things about his aquatic companions. In the back of his journal, he is drawing a map of her, documenting each new area as he explores it until finally he will have her perfect portrait, so great in likeness it might as well be a photograph, only more intimate.

In the morning, he steers his little trawler to a new patch of ocean and begins it all again.

He has not counted the days spent within her, but he knows her inside and out, knows everything about her. He knows every single creature that lives in her depths, every single plant that grows in her sand, every single wall and cave and pebble and seashell in the entire ocean, in the entirety of her. He knows and loves all of her. She is his world. He loves her more than he can stand, and he hates that he can’t live in her forever. He hates that he can’t breathe under her surface unless he sticks a tank of oxygen on his back and a mask over his face. He hates how he can’t just let her envelop him completely, let her water fill his lungs with life instead of death. He envies the fish that dance around him every time he dives into her, as if taunting him: “Look at us, look at us, we don’t have to leave!”

He catches several of the fish in jars and brings them aboard his boat. It is easy; they trust him, he who has spent so much of time among them, and they swim obligingly into his open jar and let him close the lid. They’re beautiful. Their colours are even more vivid without so much water diluting the sun’s rays. Up close and with better light, he is able to see all the intricacies of their shapes, as well. All the delicate ruffles in their fins, how many hundreds of minuscule scales they each have, each so lovely on its own, and how perfectly they all interlock to make up an even more beautiful whole. They move so gracefully even in their agitation in their tiny jars, ruffled fins swishing this way and that. He watches their every move for days on end, barely eating, barely sleeping, barely even blinking, so intently does he watch them. And when he can learn no more from his observations, he takes them out of their jars, one at a time, lays them on the table, and watches them as they flip-flop about, tiny sides heaving as they gasp for breath, their frantic eyes locked on the water-filled jars that once held them captive, yes, but alive. He watches them as they struggle to make their way across the table and back to the jars, as they throw their small bodies against the glass, desperate attempts to fling themselves back into her water. He does not blame them; he wants what they want: to submerge himself in her water and draw a life-saving breath. He watches each fish as their struggles subside, as their sides heave for the final time, and then he slices them open. He dissects them one by one with increasing skill, marking down all important data and drawing several diagrams for reference, and several times he needs to dive back into her to collect more fish, a task that becomes harder with each successive dive as the little creatures, once so friendly and trusting, will no longer come within arm’s length of him, as if they know what fate awaits those that get caught in his jars. He fills notebook after notebook after notebook with notes and diagrams and questions to research later when he is no longer scalpel-deep in a fish, and the answers to those questions as soon as he is able. It takes him weeks or months or years, he still does not count, but at long last his research is complete and he manages to build for himself from pilfered parts and stolen life that which he desires above all else: a fully-functional set of gills.

The process of attaching the gills was one far simpler in theory than in practice. It takes numerous attempts and leaves several future scars, but he finally manages it. He has gills. Gills. He considers briefly keeping his lungs as well, but what’s the point? With gills, he can live in her forever, never needing to return to the surface. And if it weren’t for the necessity of it, he knows he would have stopped surfacing long, long ago. So he removes his lungs, which gets a bit complicated at the end, as he is performing the operation out of water and it’s rather difficult to stitch everything back up without being able to breathe. The stitches might not be pretty, but he’s finally finished. He places his old lungs in a box which he slides under his bed – a keepsake, like a cherished childhood toy one has outgrown but can’t quite bear to part with. He takes one last lap around his ship, making sure everything is in its place, before returning to the bedroom. There, he takes off all his clothes, folding each item as he removes it, and piles them neatly on the edge of the bed.

Finally, naked and nearly blue in the face, he steps onto the ship’s rail. He stands there for a moment, arms outstretched, ready to give himself to her completely. He was always hers, from long before he met her, from back when oceans were just a fairytale he couldn’t help believing. It took him so long, but he was finally able to mold himself into the perfect specimen for her, the perfect creature to live in her forever. He did everything for her, and now, as soon as he stepped off the ship’s rail, she would be able to cradle and nourish and love him forever, as wholly as he loved her.

He waits until he can’t not breathe a single second longer. He wants his first breath of her to be significant. He closes his eyes, lifts his right foot off the rail, and lets his weight tumble forward, ready for her to catch him, to breathe life into him. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

It never comes. He’s falling but her water never catches him. He opens his eyes, wants to look at her, to ask her why she’s not catching him.

There is no water. There are no fish. No sea creatures at all, or plants or rocks or seashells. His ship is gone, his clothes are gone, his lungs are gone. For a minute, he thinks his eyes are gone as well. There is only inky blackness around him. But no, look, there’s a tiny glimmer in the distance. And another, and another. They’re all around him, these tiny pinpricks of light in the distance. And as his eyes adjust, he realizes the air around him isn’t black at all, but full of blues and purples and pinks and greens. All the colors he recognizes, for he lived with them for years. They are the colors of the ocean and all that lived within it. But it’s not an ocean at all. She’s not an ocean at all.

She’s a galaxy. He doesn’t know why he could never see it before. And as he floats in her space, he wishes he could explore her as a galaxy rather than an ocean. There’s so much he misunderstood, so much he wants to understand now. She does not speak, but still her words fill him. He had his chance, she says. He had all the time in the universe to see her, but all he chose to see was an ocean.

But I did everything for you, he says.

No.

I gave myself gills just to live in you, he says.

But what good are gills when I was never made of water?