I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside.
Before he wakes up I run to the bathroom to see what I look like, and I actually look pretty good. Flushed and fuckable. I go back and he's still sprawled out on the bed and I fold my body into his and think about how I want to look to him when he wakes up. I want to be sleeping in a casual sexy way, to make him want me again.
I remember, especially in high school, I was so good at this kind of fake-out. I rehearsed thoughtfulness, I appeared carefree--and how many guys did I trick? As I sat there, hair tucked behind my ear, supposedly lost in a book, thinking this exact monologue, rereading and rereading the same paragraph, waiting for them to see me and want me, caught in this image of myself as a reader. What about staring at ants, wanting to seem close to nature and whimsical? What about staring into space, wanting to seem expansive, trying to find the thoughts that would fit my self-portrait? I fooled so many guys! I was found mysterious so many times, oh that girl, we don't know what Susie thinks, and all I'm thinking is what do I look like, and all I'm thinking is that I own their thoughts.
I think of that girl I read about in the paper - the girl with the flammable skirt. She’d bought a rayon chiffon skirt, purple with wavy lines all over it. She wore it to a party and was dancing, too close to the vanilla-smelling candles, and suddenly she lit up like a pine needle torch. When the boy dancing next to her felt the heat and smelled the plasticky smell, he screamed and rolled the burning girl up in the carpet. She got third-degree burns up and down her thighs. But what I keep wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was the candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips and the warmth of the music inside her did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?
...there is something so awful, something so gross about watching someone who loves you struggle to believe what you both know, deep down, is partially a lie.
