(no subject)
I still have a little ache inside me for you, you know. Maybe it's for you, or maybe it's for the you I thought you were. Then again, it might be for your sister, or the last girl I kissed for real, or that punk on the train with the blue hair. It might be for any number of women with accents-- British, Aussie, Kiwi, or deep American south. Perhaps that ache is actually for the woman I kissed during a thunderstorm last summer, or the one who kissed me hard and fast last fall.
The ache travels. I have always fallen in love with women with lots of teeth, I think to myself as the ache centers itself in my right hip, reaching around toward my spine. (Of course they have the same number of teeth as anyone else, but they smile more.)
The ache reaches around to my abdomen and I remember the women I wanted children with, girlfriend number three, who is still married, and girlfriend number four, who I saw in the window table of a restaurant a week ago but did not approach.
The ache resides like a knot in an overtired muscle, deep in my neck. A woman once slid her hands across it and pressed down, saying, "There's the spot" as I yelped. Her transparent hands worked at it and she told me the trick was to breathe, although I have been breathing and the ache remains.
If I could, I would decant it, sliding the ache off as it floats on top of the rest of my life, bottling it in a jar with Your Name on it. I'd send it to you through the mail and the United States Postal Service would think me a terrorist.
I'd cut it out with a scalpel or a rusty letter opener and vacuum seal it and leave it in the freezer until it was just a lump of frostbitten, out-of-date ache.
I would draw a sign, "Free to good home: one ache," and I would put them up all over the neighborhood and when someone came to ask about adopting the ache I wouldn't tell them that it makes me drink and sometimes doesn't go on the paper.
"One hundred and two," says the nurse taking my temperature. I want to explain that if she was able to find the perfect spot and thrust the thermometer inside, she would find a marble ten degrees cooler and could we please do something about that? I want to say that, but instead I talk about the flu rather than the ache.
There is still a little ache inside me, for you, or for a multitude of things that are not you. I drop it like pennies on the pavement and it clinks. I fling it in the air like confetti.
There is a very little ache that I would like to be rid of. It's not worth much at all, except... every now and then, I open my mouth and it sings.
Love,
Beth
The ache travels. I have always fallen in love with women with lots of teeth, I think to myself as the ache centers itself in my right hip, reaching around toward my spine. (Of course they have the same number of teeth as anyone else, but they smile more.)
The ache reaches around to my abdomen and I remember the women I wanted children with, girlfriend number three, who is still married, and girlfriend number four, who I saw in the window table of a restaurant a week ago but did not approach.
The ache resides like a knot in an overtired muscle, deep in my neck. A woman once slid her hands across it and pressed down, saying, "There's the spot" as I yelped. Her transparent hands worked at it and she told me the trick was to breathe, although I have been breathing and the ache remains.
If I could, I would decant it, sliding the ache off as it floats on top of the rest of my life, bottling it in a jar with Your Name on it. I'd send it to you through the mail and the United States Postal Service would think me a terrorist.
I'd cut it out with a scalpel or a rusty letter opener and vacuum seal it and leave it in the freezer until it was just a lump of frostbitten, out-of-date ache.
I would draw a sign, "Free to good home: one ache," and I would put them up all over the neighborhood and when someone came to ask about adopting the ache I wouldn't tell them that it makes me drink and sometimes doesn't go on the paper.
"One hundred and two," says the nurse taking my temperature. I want to explain that if she was able to find the perfect spot and thrust the thermometer inside, she would find a marble ten degrees cooler and could we please do something about that? I want to say that, but instead I talk about the flu rather than the ache.
There is still a little ache inside me, for you, or for a multitude of things that are not you. I drop it like pennies on the pavement and it clinks. I fling it in the air like confetti.
There is a very little ache that I would like to be rid of. It's not worth much at all, except... every now and then, I open my mouth and it sings.
Love,
Beth