january 2nd 2024

i think my name is the most romantic thing someone could call me. i’ve always loved my name, and i’ve always hated anything else. baby, sweetheart, even the nice ones like darling, none really strike me. of course, my love: my father talked her down from shrieking displays by pandering to her violent desires, by promising her power to do it again. baby, sweetheart, darling love, his patient voice and body bowed over the table, a man so large—football physique, 6’4, lifts triple digits in the basement—parroting a mid-century housewife like his life was at stake. his mother used to lock him in closets. i am a woman, or he thinks that i am, so he is afraid of me too, my voice that shakes walls. he knows what i will be. 

after you slept with her—the first one—i raised my voice to you and never again, never once again. i slammed myself out and i stood behind the door and she said, come up on the bed, let me hold you, and you said, but what if she sees? and i stormed back through and you were my mother, i imagined this, and i scalded you both in hot water. my anger is a home. it is green with plastic panels. you were not supposed to see, but i did not regret bringing you inside—take me in, all of it, and burn.

everyone falls in love with you. whether they fall out depends on occasion, but everyone’s in one way or another, as soon as you let them, and you always do— you want it bad. but you don’t believe it, and you’d never see it coming. sadistic, but you catch us well: you are unreal, you are a figment of dreams. here we go: hook through the skin under my lip, i’m no beast of the sea, but good and fat enough to feed you. you wear your hair down as i like it. my head’s on the mattress, the first one. you lean your back against the wall. you know so much about the movie, and i can’t tell if you’re serious. you risk looking at me, unclipped flower. i say, are you going to kiss me? i consider, for a moment. not a week now. i am not simple, i don’t know how to be. you turn the lights on. 

in two years you’ll tell me how heavy mistakes can be. you wouldn’t swallow that day, always keeping you awake that i wouldn’t let you love me. you did it on your own. josephine, in your letter—confessions, last week in the city—words you’ll still use, i cannot even bear in my mind. it’s still there. i cannot let me love you.