OFM Lit: Separated Seasons
January 19
Your mom makes me a grieving cake with lavender icing and yellow dusting sprinkles. She listens for my feelings to swell. For a lake of my predestined preoccupation with sadness to be collected into her fists and mended to turn tomorrow just another day. I fix the sheets in the makeshift bed where last night your breath steamed in my ear, a simple request to love me. I promise your mom, for both us, that we would stay another night. Only then does she cut into the cake. It is red velvet, your favorite, not mine. Her hand squeezes the meat of my shoulder. You know how I struggle with touch, how much energy it takes to press back into her hand instead of back into myself. A cheesy song comes to mind. The words filter through my bones: if only we could find a way to leave all our darker days, soak in all the sweetness of our skin.
This song skims against my chest and stings, barreling a fist-sized hole through my sternum. I flip a pericardium joke around in my mind. I excuse myself to call a friend and say that the heart is its own person, in its own skin, somehow stuck keeping another whole person alive. I laugh to them, then I affirm, I am alive.
April 4
I know no pleasure greater than kissing you under falling cherry blossoms. Your smile is a great aesthetic. The wafting, sweet scent of flowers is an unnecessary bonus. You tuck your fingers under the silk straps of my white dress. The fabric softens with your warmth, and every molecule in me buzzes as my palms grasp onto your bicep and back. I used to think I was distilling you into a big what-if that I gulped down with my morning cup of coffee. Still, you present yourself to me, brilliant and bold. You are here.
It is noon on another continent, and we are clutching the handles of our perspective suitcases dashing toward the next adventure.
On the plane, you whisper Wang Wei poems into my ear. I dunk shortbread cookies into a cup of black tea, feeding them to you between stanzas. Your muffled giggle reminds me of waking up to blue jays on a small island in Maine more than a decade ago.
June 23
I watch you dress, meditating on the amber-honey freckle below your collarbone. My heart’s skin claws at my own. You remove your shirt and look back at me, close up, one eye at a time. My teeth stand atop my bottom lip. You envelop me, slipping back into bed, reaching to tuck my hair behind my ear. I know I idolize far too much, especially the empty spaces in our days. Still, I know we will always be two separate countries with foreign flora and fauna, blooming and howling at the edges of a new moon. Always my gut holds a knowing at how natural it is to be next to you.
