Limerence - a series of moments from a tumultuous, intoxicating situationship
Catalogue
I've been learning your facial expressions, and how they make me feel.
There's the face you make when you're listening to me, when we're catching up after a few days apart. You're on your back, I'm on your front. Your eyes are wide and bright and you can barely keep still or quiet. You interrupt my stories, excited and eager to reconnect, then apologize and urge me on. My hair falls forward and we thread our fingers together. I push your arms above your head until you pull me down, and we roll into a tangle of limbs, laughing.
Then you close your eyes and sigh, and I see the face you wear when you need to tell me how good you feel about what's happening. "I just want this all the tiiiime," you say in the sweetest whine I've ever heard, putting your forehead against mine. The more serious the thing you want to say, the softer your voice gets. "Do you know how much I care about you?" This just a whisper. Your eyes stay shut in these moments, probably because you know mine don't. There's only so much we can take.
This weekend I was treated to one of my favorites: the face you make when I get to you, in the best way. And I was merciless this weekend. So high and so fearless, wanting to give more than I usually dare. I sat on your lap, teasing you with some delicious promise or thought, talking low and close to your ear so you could hear me clearly over the music. Then I'd watch the smile come on your face, the one where you have no choice, as your head tips back helplessly. You won't look at me in these moments, keeping your gaze straight ahead as your breath comes harder--but you'll grip me tighter to let me know how you feel. It's intoxicating and unforgettable, this face and this feeling. Probably my favorite.
Or maybe my favorite is the one you make late at night, or early in the morning. There's very little light in these moments, but I've memorized your features so I don't need much anyway. It's a grin bordering on a smirk, and it is just amazing. It's like nothing I've ever seen. Playfulness and power in equal measure. You, in complete and perfect control. Us, in complete and perfect sync.
There are others, too, with more delicate edges. There's the face you make when I've pushed some teasing joke too far. Your lips twist slightly and your head drops a bit, a silent complaint that I'm being unfair. That I don't know. (And I know I don't, always. I know that.) Your sensitivity in these moments is the most breathtaking beautiful thing I can imagine.
Or there's the face you make when you're calling me out. You flash your eyes at me meaningfully and the way you tilt your head says everything. But you only hold this expression for a second because at the end of the day, it is a tiny criticism. And you never want me to feel bad. In fact your desire to make me happy is written all over your face, your words, and your choices, every single day.
And I feel it. And it's working.
Early Summer Sunset
"Give me something of you that no one else has gotten," he said. "Show me something no one else has seen."
She smiled. In the request she heard his need to feel a singular, private connection between them. A desire, however impossible, to banish the specter of Lovers Past. This moved her deeply, because she could relate. Jealousy was a pin prick she felt keenly and all too often. The glimpses of it she saw in him only made her love him more.
So she held her breath and plunged into waters that were increasingly unpredictable. Warm one day; icy another. She swam deep and her muscles limbered with the movement. She felt vulnerable and beautiful, and when she rose to the surface, the breath she took to fill her burning lungs was triumphant.
But he was gone. She was alone in her victory, which suddenly felt small, stupid, and superficial.
She tread water quietly, scanning the shore, expecting him to reappear at any moment. But he didn't, and after a while she let the tide pull her in to a beach quickly cooling in the early summer sunset.
Either Way
Sometimes loving you is like wrapping a blanket around a small, fragile creature. Soft fur, steady heartbeat. Calm and grateful for the shelter I have to give.
And sometimes loving you is like gathering broken glass with my bare hands. Fractured pieces reflecting light in every direction that I'm ineptly, hopelessly trying to capture. Splinters and blood and the suspicion that I'm only making a bigger mess.
Don't be scared of me; I'm not scared of scars.
Buyers Market
I've built a summer home for us, with walls made of expectation.
Sometimes winter won't let go, gets jealous of spring, and there's nothing anyone can do about it until the sun turns and says Enough. I have been waiting and waiting for that moment, and I can feel it coming. And when it does I want your skin against mine, as the heat sinks back into my bones.
I've stocked this summer home with all the things we'll need. Beach towels, my terrible navigation, and a full tank of gas. Watermelon cubes, sunsets to squint at, and cool sheets for sunburned shoulders.
I'm packed and ready to go. I don't think I'm going to bring my phone, or my laptop, or very many of my insecurities. I want to leave space for the things we didn't know we'd find there.
There's room for two in the summer home I've built -- but just barely. Let me know if you want to come along; otherwise I'll bring more of me.
Prize
I have been spending all my quarters on the claw game that is us. I'm not getting any better, but I'm definitely going broker.
At first I thought it was about precision. That if I puzzled out the distance and depth - if I reached just far enough - I would get you in my grasp. It didn't work.
Down you tumbled back among the others, sinking in the softness, winking one perfect, plastic blue eye at me. I was teased, I was titillated. I tried again.
I thought maybe my perspective was off. That from where I stood unmoving, you were too two-dimensional. And god knows you are anything but. So I went this way and that, lifting and dropping my head, tracking you like an animal that hasn't yet decided whether it wants to be caught.
But all my dancing around made me run out of time, and the joystick went joyless in my hand.
I cashed in a five, then a twenty, then my heart's savings, and I played until the arcade attendants (who look suspiciously similar to my friends) gently pulled me away.
"We open at 11," they said, leading me to the exit. "But maybe consider a hike instead?"
I am determined to beat this game. The prize is wildly out of reach, but I am wild about the prize. Though if you could just lean towards me the tiniest bit, we'll have a much better chance of winning.
Sunshine
As usual, I meet him on the street outside my building. Sometimes we call to one another in the dark, a high-pitched chirp or squawk. It's one of the wonderfully dumb us-isms that make too much time apart start to hurt. Amazing how the silliest bonds can be some of the strongest.
Tonight I just silently smile and open my arms in invitation. Nothing in this world like the feel of him, after a break. Weeks of tension and loneliness melt off of me and I unwind, finally relaxed in the security of our reunion. I am entirely too dependent on his love, entirely too hinged on the ups and downs of our relationship - but the world has grown terrifying and awful and I need him. I unapologetically need him.
"I got some licorice," he announces, and I see telltale bits of red in his perfect, bright smile. "And I have a surprise for you."
We stay so long on the sidewalk, hugging, saying hello, and just breathing one another in, that someone on a patio nearby cracks a joke. We don't quite catch it, something teasing or perhaps mildly derogatory.
"I haven't seen this fool in three weeks," I explain to the voice. I take his hand and lead him to the gate. "We have work to do," I add, over my shoulder.
But we don't get five feet before he stops me, needing to reconnect now, here, it can't even wait until we get upstairs. This is a thing he does, a thing about him I love so much. His urgency to get everything out that he needs to tell me, right away. He needs me to know all the things that are on his mind about us, about me, about how he feels. How he's missed me, how much he's thought of me, how he can't wait to show me this that or the other thing he's gotten for me or for us. Sometimes there are apologies in this outpouring; often soothing reassurances. And it's all laced together with the most exquisite demonstration of physical affection. He slides his fingers around the back of my neck, his thumb along my jaw, looking me straight in the eye. He presses his forehead to mine, wraps me up in his arms, growling at the feel of my body again after so long. Deep sighs, whispers, compliments. Bliss.
Whenever he does this, I am reminded of how it feels when, on a chilly day, the sun comes out from behind the clouds. A sense of relief and gratitude for the return of warmth. Being back in the sunshine of his love is an all too real, visceral comfort.
We stop another two times before getting to the elevator. And even when we get to my floor, he won't let me out of his arms, won't stop talking to me, loving on me. The elevator door closes on us twice before we make it out. In the span of five minutes - just being near him again with all his warm bright sunlight energy - my very immune system has boosted. I can fucking feel it. I can feel how happiness is flooding my bloodstream, like a drug.
---
Star machine.
Star machine.
I know it's called something else, a laser sky or a galaxy projector, whatever. But I'm calling it the star machine.
The feel of you. You need to know. I need you to know. I don't trust this world anymore, I don't trust it not to take you away from me. I don't trust myself not to lose you. So you need to know.
The feel of you.
We say puzzle pieces, but do you really understand? It's lock and key. I can barely let my mind settle on how perfect you are, it feels dangerous, like I'll never get some part of myself back, if you go. You think I hate when you sleep, but sometimes, sometimes when you sleep it's my favorite thing because then I can just look at you. The lines of your body, you don't know. You have no idea, but you should. From your cheek down your neck across your shoulders down your back to your waist. You should know. Anything could happen, so you should know.
You should know that when we are twinned up, entwined, smiling at one another in unimaginable bliss, that it's like nothing I've known. You release and ignite something in me that no one ever has, and you should fucking know it.
Look at me and tuck my hair behind my ear. Twist it in your fingers. Press your face to my body and whisper how beautiful I am, how much you've missed me. When you do these things I'm not even sure I'm myself anymore. How could I be? How could I be the same person that has to get up, get dressed, leave, be a person, pay bills. Not possible.
Stay with me in this space we have created, we can keep it perfect if we try. Don't go away too long, please. Don't forget how this feels. Everything out there is awful but in here there is only our love and our laughter and we are safe. Don't go away too long.
Bring the sunshine back soon.
AMULET
They met in a space that was small and close, empty of expectation but full of possibility. She assumed they were alone. But something about the way he glanced sideways, nervous, then leaned towards her--
"What is it?" She touched his top shirt button, then his chin, trying to draw his gaze back to her face.
"Doesn't matter." His lopsided, reassuring smile. "I'm safe here. You're an amulet."
And she believed him.
But then time went on. And the thing, which had a name neither of them spoke aloud, kept creeping into this space of possibility. Sometimes she'd catch it in the periphery of her vision, waiting, watching, threatening. Sometimes she'd feel the weight of it on them, pressing down and pushing the air out of the room. Sometimes it tore through the moment as quick as lightning, burning her, branding her with tiny scars of unforgetting.
The thing became a thief. It stole trust. It stole joy. It stole patience. And most unforgivably, it stole time. It stole every solid stone they stood on until they lay crumpled on the ground, unmoored.
"I thought I was an amulet," she whispered, clinging tight, desperate and terrified the thing was going to rip him away forever. He shook his head; it was all he had the wherewithal to do. But she didn't know if that meant that she wasn't, and all was lost, or that she was, but it didn't matter, and all was lost anyway. She didn't know, and he couldn't say, and she was left unknowing if she had ever been anything close to enough.
And the unknowing was another tiny scar, too.
Not Sure If Honeybees or Murder Hornets
There is a moment that will not leave.
Remembering it is like waking to a dozen pairs of gossamer wings on my skin. Each fluttering detail of the scene - the diffused light of the room, the cloud white comforter we swam in - lands lightly at first. Then your face comes more clearly into view, and I feel again the way you would grab my arm or my leg to wrap around you, to always keep me close. And suddenly the soft touch of thought becomes a hundred blistering bee stings.
I breathe through it. It ends. It's okay. I'm okay.
Bees are important to all ecosystems, and I don't want my memories of you to collapse. I just want to bottle the honey, honey, and not have a hive for a heart.
Per Curiam
For months now I've been seeing a star get bigger and brighter and closer, until I finally realized it's not a star at all. It's a gavel coming down, fueled by finality so sure it's splitting the sky in half.
Every night the courtroom assembles on my ceiling. The jury troops in, exhausted by evidence that doesn't sway them as much as emotion, no matter how many times it is trotted out for their review. A judge in heavy black robes presides, a faceless ghost whose ruling will set no one free, anyway.
And you. You shuffle in, locked in chains whose weight and shame have somehow transferred to me.
And I. I lay pinned on my back, listening, learning nothing of use as you plead the fifth for the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time.
We represent ourselves, or at least pretend to, two souls already jailed by our own devices. And every night I wait for you to object. And every night I watch your face for some sign of protest. But silence is the only argument you have to make, and I have no choice but to allow it.
P r o b l e m
"I have a problem," you said, and as they hit the ground the words grew like seeds planted. "I have a problem," you said, "but I don't have it when I'm with you."
Well, the part about me fell away like chaff. But the part about you took root between us, deep and undeniable. In time it forced its way up, splitting the sidewalk until we could not walk to one another without stumbling.
"I have a problem," you said, and the words swelled in the summer heat, higher and higher until they were as tall as the Hollywood sign. Until they were tall enough for you to climb right inside and hide from me there, whenever I looked too hard. Whenever I loved too hard.
You left, but the shells of one word remain. I can see your ghost sometimes, in one or another letter.
I can see you in the P, waiting at the gate, your thumbs hooked under the straps of your backpack.
I can see you in the M, how you kicked all your limbs out across the bed at night.
I can see you in the O, curled senseless and lost to me, around the thing you couldn't escape.
And so on. But it's just an illusion; it's not actually you. Tourists don't know, until they try, that they can't really get to the Hollywood sign. And now I know I can't really get to you.
The Y You Chose
I dreamt of wolves the night we didn't say goodbye - the night you left me with two single letters and not much more.
"Should I move on? y/n"
You answered quickly.
"It's not that easy."
I dreamt of wolves, which was a departure from the whales and the water. Five or six of them, out in the cold, caliginous night. Snow on the ground muffled their movements, but I knew they were there. And they knew about me, too.
We went back and forth. You talked about how hard it's been. How you're figuring yourself out. How you're trying and fixing. "I know," I said. "I believe it. And I'm not crowding you or rushing you. But it's been three months and I'm checking in." But you wouldn't choose y and you wouldn't choose n, so we went a few more rounds.
The wolves paced underneath my window while my mind roamed other dreamscapes, anxious and aware that some unconfronted danger was waiting for me. Finally I came back. It was an empty, echoing shell of a building, like the weird, abandoned camp we found that night in the woods.
I think wolves have always reminded me of you. You like to move in packs, with whom you trust everything. You can be solitary when you need to be. You were made for the cold, and for never being caught.
I felt compelled to open the window and climb out onto the ledge. I was dangerously close to the ground, to the animals below. I couldn't stop myself from reaching out to them. Shades of ash and smoke; lanky, hungry, menacing. The nearest snarled at me as I extended my hand. But slowly, gently, I ran my palm across his furry head. He flattened his ears and stood still for my touch.
It went on for maybe an hour. "It's been horrible and the only outlet I have is music and going outdoors." By now how pointedly you were avoiding saying anything about me, about us - only you, you, you - had me desperate to end it, finally. Just a month ago you said "I'm doing this for you," but you weren't, were you? You aren't. I've turned off all the music, I've lay alone and silent in my bed listening as hard as I could, but all I have heard is snow falling, covering and quieting every trace of us.
"I already know how you feel about music and outdoors. I'm asking how you feel about me. Should I move on? y/n."
"y"
And just as I'd willed it into existence, the y you chose lit up the otherwise dark room, a tiny point of light like a candle burning out. I didn't miss a beat before I asked one last question. "But it was awesome for a while, right? y/n"
"y"
I didn't remember the ending to my dream until late in the morning, and when I did, an avalanche of feeling knocked me breathless. In the end, the perspective shifted from first to third person, and as if filmed by drone I saw myself sitting in the snow, surrounded closely by the wolves. Two stood like sentries at my shoulders: noses up, noble. One lay across my lap, a wild thing choosing to be docile and calm. Two or three others were a blur of fur and limb and majesty. They were mine and I was theirs and there was safety and trust and an unspoken intimacy.
I won't look for you again. You can have your forest back, and I'll find one of my own. Snow will fall and erase our tracks, faster than it took us to put them down. Winter is merciful that way.
The Barrel of Chances
Some of us keep a barrel of chances, in a secret place, just for someone special.
It's hard to hide a whole barrel, though, so our closest friends and family - usually they know. Our closest friends and family have seen us slink off to this secret place, pry the barrel head off, and fish out another chance.
And then another. And another. And another.
They've watched as we doled them out to our someone special like saltwater taffies to children. These chances dissolve like taffy, too, leaving nothing behind but a taste for just one more.
The barrel of chances is deep and wide; it's sturdy like our unshakable expectations, with oaken staves as pliant as our boundaries. It endlessly replenishes itself, like magic, so no matter how hard you try, you can never get to the self-respect that hides at the very bottom.
Chirp
You came to me this week hidden in the secrets of others. They have no idea that in them, I only ever see you. I see you in their desires, their curiosities, their apologies.
I only ever see you, still.
I gave in, I laid back, I closed my eyes. I swallowed the burning, selfish desire to reach out and interrupt your journey. The ache is a kind of faith. I have to believe you were there with me, and that you just don't know how to get back.
It's been almost two years since we went to the canyon. The swing. The spilled wine. The drum. I'm here now, you said.
Were you?
I hear you in songs you'd probably hate, in things you'd never say even if you felt them like blood in your bones.
It's a kind of faith.
Slingshot Moon
Time is a liar. "Just relax," Time told me. "I got this."
Time said I didn't have to do a thing. That I had the easiest job in the world. That all I had to do was wait.
"Do nothing," Time said. "I'll take care of everything."
But Time lied. I waited and waited and waited. I sat on my hands when they itched to reach out. I bit my lips when they longed to call out. I quietly ticked off days and weeks and months, keeping still under Time's stern gaze.
But Time lied. Nothing was fixed; nothing made better. So now I'm looking for a new truth. And I think I've found it in the rising moon.
Last night the rising moon was a perfect disc of cool white neon. It hung low and heavy in the eastern sky, an unmissable invitation. The road curved as I walked, but I didn't take my eyes off it once.
And every tree seemed to split at the top, like a slingshot cradling a milk-white marble. Branches lined up one after another all down the street, so I could follow this slingshot moon and think about how someday, I will launch myself eastward to be closer to it. Like a slingshot marble I'll fly fast and far, catching the rising moon when it hits exactly the right spot in the sky. I'll let go and drop back to earth, and I'll plant myself there. I'll put my own truths down then, and they'll grow deep and real, like roots.
That feels like something I can do. That feels like choice and change and control, when the second, minute, and hour hands of time have done nothing but tell me lies.
Such Great Heights
The climb was painstaking. Every foothold was a lie; every single step forward came at a cost of two steps backward. Backsliding for weeks at a time. She told herself that even the longest, darkest winters end. But deep down she didn't know if she really believed that. And some days, she didn't even bother trying to haul herself up. Some days she just sat and let the cold strip her to the bones of pure sadness.
Then one morning, a memory broke across her. But though she flinched for the pain, there was nothing in it but sight and sound. It had no force behind it. It was a flickering movie screen: one dimensional. Neutral. She took this memory in her hands and carefully unfolded it. As she opened it up, more details escaped. A tone of voice. A turn of phrase. A touch of skin.
But it didn't hurt. Miraculously, against all the odds she'd stacked up in hopeless confusion - it didn't hurt. And that's when she knew she'd reached the top of the tallest mountain in the world. Without even realizing it, she'd moved up and through and away and beyond.
With slow, measured steps she crept out onto the highest peak, wondering what the view would be, and what glimpses of future happiness she might have. But the mountain was so high it ended in clouds. There was nothing to see, but plenty to feel. And that's when she realized:
There are an infinite number of futures.
There is only one present.
But for some, there are two pasts: the one we want to believe happened, and the one that actually did. You can see them both, but only if you climb the tallest mountain in the world.
Concessions
Everything I want to say to you is like an overpriced box of candy at the movies, shrink-wrapped in plastic. There is no subtle way to open it, but you can't quit until it's done.
And if I did: sour bites would tumble out loudly, briefly enjoyable but ultimately regrettable.
Not worth the cost.
Gatekeeping
A feeling like forgiveness came knocking at the gate. I saw it through the peephole but I didn't let it in, because feelings often wear disguises and I'm not always sure I can trust them. But I was less afraid than curious, so I went to the window and drew back the curtain, and this is what I saw:
I saw you and I in a surprise meeting, running into one another on some common, beloved ground. I saw myself not freezing, and not running away. I saw myself smile and even laugh a little. But I saw that underneath, my bones were like cold stone in winter moonlight. They held no warmth for you, because they'd been bereft of sunshine for so long.
In my fantasy, you came to me wordlessly, and I melted against your chest in pure bliss. But that you doesn't exist and never has, and that me learned to keep myself warm all through winter, alone.
And now there's a gate where I make my feelings stop and wait until I trust them. Today a feeling like forgiveness came knocking, but it was just indifference in disguise.
The One Who Would Not Budge
"You can't stop here," they said, when they found me planted cross-legged on the road. I looked up.
"Why not? There's plenty of room to pass around me."
"It's a No Standing Zone."
"I'm not standing. I'm sitting."
The officers shifted uncomfortably, glanced at one another. "Listen," said the first, whose name badge read APATHY, "We know you've been here a while already. It's time to move on."
"Well, I can't. I've tried."
The other, whose badge read SYMPATHY, knelt down. "Do you want us to call someone for you?"
"Like who?"
"Like a friend."
I brought my knees up to my chest and wrapped the flannel I was wearing tight around me. I pulled the sleeves down over my hands, disappearing as much of myself as I could in the brown and green plaid. It was an invisibility cloak that hid exactly nothing from no one.
"Everyone knows everything already," I said softly.
"Look here," started Apathy, "you can't just---" But his partner held up a hand and shook his head, and they left.
The next night they returned to find me in the exact same spot. "We brought you something." Sympathy held a weathered envelope with an AirMail stamp. He buzzed with excitement as he handed to me.
"What's this?" I asked, accepting it with little interest.
Apathy glared. "Just open it."
Inside the envelope was a four hundred and forty-eight word apology, from someone six thousand miles away, whom I hadn't thought about once in two years.
I read it, then read it again. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"We thought you'd be pleased." Sympathy was disappointed.
I handed the letter back. "Would you please go? I'd like to be alone."
"This is unhealthy," declared Apathy. "Pathetic, really."
"I am aware," I replied.
"What are you going to do, just stay here forever?"
I took a deep breath and looked from Sympathy to Apathy and back again. "Have you never read any of the Romantics?"
"You mean like the stuff with Fabio on the cover?"
I blinked. "No. No I do not mean like the stuff with Fabio on the cover." I took another deep breath. "Gentlemen, I appreciate your concern. I do. But right now I am like a character in a Bronte novel. Unrequited, long-suffering, noble if unrewarded devotion - all that. I see no reason to move on from where I am until I'm ready, and frankly, I think there's worse, less beautiful stances I could take up in this life.
Sympathy's face softened. Apathy's brow furrowed.
With my thumb I traced circles around the button at the bottom of my shirt. "I'm choosing this," I said, as if to the button. "I might stop choosing it tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next. But right now, here, exactly where I am is exactly the only place I can be."
I pulled a matchbox from my pocket, struck a light on the nearest memory that sparked. "Now if you don't mind, I have a candle to burn."
As they walked away, conferring in low tones about the one who would not budge, the setting sun blurred them into silhouettes. I couldn't tell without squinting who was who, because the road I wasn't ready to move down very quickly disappeared into a future I wasn't ready to see.
Your Final Fix
There is something about me that makes men want to dig up my bones long after they have buried me. It has always been this way. Sooner or later, whatever the circumstance of the breakup, they come find me. An unbroken track record, as I tell my friends. See? I told you. All of them. Every last one, without fail. My friends listen with careful neutrality. They don't want to get roped back in, either.
It's taken as little as a month and as long as three years. Eventually they come find me, for one reason or another. Rarely do they want a relationship revividus. They're just looking to fill whatever hole has opened up within them, in that moment of their lives. The guilt-laden want absolution. The players want more play. The covert narcissists want a hit of supply. The good guys want their good guy cards stamped and renewed.
Never is it to offer me anything that I might want or need. Maybe it's not really about me after all.
---
On a frigid bank holiday in January, because I have promised myself an adventure, I walk the hallowed grounds of Chicago's most famous cemetery. Later, I'm going to get a hot dog, at another landmark destination. I am a tourist in my own town, with a two-item itinerary. Look out, Chicago.
Graceland is gloriously empty this winter's day. No doubt in spring the verdant hills and birdsong make it parklike and lush. And fall will be sight to behold, when trees drop shimmering leaves that bedazzle the impassive grey tombstones. But it's a graveyard. Spare, cold, and bleak only enhance the effect.
There is no noise other than the regular rumbling of the train a few blocks over. No other visitors besides one solitary, puffing jogger. Headstones, obelisks, and sarcophagi stretch as far as I can see, across gently sloping land where patches of grass break up the snow. I'm looking for the bridge I saw on the cemetery's website. I'm also listening to a self-guided tour, which turns out to be less a comprehensive deep dive and more a series of quick dips. Thirty seconds about this baron. Forty seconds about that magnate. Chicago's legendary captains of industry. In case you forgot who had money and power, kindly direct your gaze to the towering pillared pavilion on your left. Potter Palmer and wife Bertha (nee Honore), at your service.
I turn off the audio tour. I'd rather hear stories about the everyday folk anyway. The ones whose graves are marked with modest slabs of quartz, some inlaid flat into the ground. In winter, they disappear under a blanket of white. I bet they like that seasonal break from public view. I bet they worked damn hard in life, and haven't much use for the likes of my curious eyes. When people ask me what dead person I'd most like to meet, I always say my great-great-great-great grandmother. Wouldn't that be a dose of eye-widening perspective.
Their names delight. Wendell. Esther. Horace. Atticus. Expectant mothers could get the jump on the next baby name trend, they're all right here for the taking. I wonder how many Mabels this Mabel went to school with. If she even did. Mabel would probably scoff at my problems. Mabel probably had to heat water up on the stove, itself a modern luxury. I tell myself that any one of the souls buried here would trade places with me in a minute, just for the treasure of another single day of life. But would they?
---
I pass a headstone engraved with a list of five Johns. John the Fifth sleeps forever beneath a Celtic cross close to the road. The indignity of being a fifth already stings, and here he is with this terrible real estate on top of it. A row of headstones crumbles besides. How can they be crumbling? They're just a couple hundred years old at most. What must it take to wear down a gravestone?
You can live all your life in the same house, but your bones will still spend longer in a cemetery. How long do you have to be somewhere before you can call it home? How long do bones have to rest before you shouldn't disturb them anymore?
---
Imagination seizes. I picture every single previously living person suddenly sitting atop their grave. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Men in black flannel waistcoats and pressed wool trousers, doffing their derby hats at women in sweeping brocade dresses, who discreetly check their hair pins after so long a sleep. They make no sound. Some look around, taking in their surroundings. Others look down at their bodies, getting oriented to their post-corporeal forms. A sea of ghosts from another era. Can you see them? Can you see the twisted ends of the men's mustaches, and the pointed toes of the women's buckled shoes? Each of them is the age they were when they died--when they left their loved ones behind.
I will remember you how I last saw you, for better or for worse. How will you remember me?
On the steps of a shed-sized mausoleum, one natty phantom leans against the stately columns of his eternal home. Chin high and proud as a peacock, he observes the scene. He holds a top hat: rich black silk signaling all that he was and all that he had. But my hand would pass through him just as easily as it would his poorer counterparts, if I dared. Not that I would dare.
I'm less afraid of MacDougal. Lanky, soigne, with a lopsided smile and posture to match. His legs are crossed in studied insouciance and a shock of blond hair needs the constant attention of his fingers to rake it back. His top coat is perfectly cut to his figure, but ripped across the chest. Something about the rip--and about him generally--suggests last minute foul play. A bar tussle. Some lady's honor on the line. Or maybe he was just drunk.
MacDougal watches me from one of the more interesting graves in this place. A bench with a semi-circle structure behind it. Four slender, grooved columns support a curved mantel that bears his name. He's watching me from the bench where he sits, suppressing a smile, clearly amused by something. His grave seems to have been designed with this exact moment in mind. A throne from which to watch passerby, forever and ever. And here he is watching me.
He can't speak--none of them can--but he nods at something behind me.
What? What is he looking--oh. I turn and see that the portable phone charger I have brought from home is being dragged through the snow, still plugged into the phone that, thankfully, is safe and dry in my pocket. Six feet of cord extend from my coat to the small black device, which trails behind me like a dog on a leash. Ruined, I assume, but when I pull it out of the snow I see the indicator light still glowing green. When I turn back to MacDougal, ready to face his mockery, he has vanished. They all have. It's just me again, in this quiet expanse of cold stone and bare trees.
Later at home, I'll find that to my amazement both the charger and cord have survived the mishap. I wonder if MacDougal had something to do with it.
----
Ellie, I'm sorry for everything. Are you in Michigan? I'm moving to Ohio. Please text me.
Here we go again, I think. I've woken up to yet another shovel slamming into the frozen earth above me. Trying to get at my bones. Trying to exhume what has been laying peacefully.
I stare at my phone, unmoved. There is no sense of vindication, or validation. I had to validate myself, after months of silence told me I had no choice. I waited and waited and was left to wonder for an entire year. An entire year, it took me to move on. But I did.
Setting my phone aside, I slip back into dreams.
---
I find the bridge. It crosses the stream that runs the grounds and connects to a tiny island where a handful of plots are marked by simple, rough-hewn boulders. The stream is frozen, and I resist the urge to drop a rock and see just how frozen. Instead I cross the bridge and walk the perimeter of the island. This is where I'd want to be buried. I bet ducks call this home in warmer months. I wouldn't mind ducks waddling over my grave. We all have to live somewhere.
My destination found, I am free to go get a hot dog. I have successfully completed Graceland Cemetery. I am happy with what I have gotten out of it. I am happy with what I am leaving in it.
---
Time was, I ached for one more day with him, to get my questions answered and bewildered heart calmed. What the fuck just happened? How are you gone so fast, and ignoring me? What did I do? Why won't you answer me? Is this a punishment? Did you not feel the same? Did I dream this whole thing? Are you coming back when you get better?
Now, though, enough snow has fallen on that grave. Several seasons of it, in fact. I can't really hear what's going on up there, and I don't care to know. I'm safe and warm down here where I am. Mabel just put water on to boil. She's been saving some cocoa for a special occasion, and we both have the day off.
My bones are fine, right where they are.