I won’t tell you that the day you told me you had size ten feet I cried. I cried because I have size ten feet and you have size ten feet and she had size ten feet and now I’m with someone who is the same height and weight and shoe size as her and who is sweet like her and soft like her and now too much like her except you have blue eyes and long hair and you love me and you are very much alive.
I won’t tell you that I sleep with the lights off only when you are here. I won’t tell you that you’re not allowed to see me fully naked. I won’t tell you that I’m not allowed to see me fully naked.
I won’t tell you that the joy you feel recounting your family’s quirk of loving thrifted hospital sheets feels in my body the same way a fridge drawer feels when rotted vegetables liquify. I won’t tell you that I still have the hospital sheet that her body was wrapped up in. I won’t tell you that bits of car glass were still stuck in it. I won’t tell you that hospital sheet has been in my mouth because her blood was on it.
I won’t tell you that your March of 2020 is filled with photo after photo of you at your family’s home and I don’t have a single photo from March because I don’t yet know how to glamorize binge drinking in my apartment because I don’t want to think about men because I don’t want to think about what just happened to me because I don’t want to be aware that I have a body.
I won’t tell you that when I realize it’s quiet between us, I have no idea how long for. I realize it’s quiet and I don’t know if it’s been five minutes of quiet or five hours and I ask you what you’ve been thinking about and you think I’m flirting and I’m really just anxious and trying to understand what time it is.
I won’t tell you when you ask me what I’m thinking about and I say all sorts of things, I don’t mean “I’m horny and this is my way of flirting,” I mean I’m so tired of being traumatized by men and by partners and please just be nice to me but not too nice because then I will think something terrible is about to happen.
I won’t tell you that when you ask about triggers I’m not going to tell you any triggers because everything is triggering and I’m sorry and I can’t ever not look at a little blue Prius because I think that maybe she will be in it and maybe I can touch her fingers and run my nails against her knuckles before they turn blue. I won’t tell you that I wish I could chew her fingers like carrots and spit them back into my hand, spit them back into her hand, fold her fingers over the spit fingers while she blinks because she is alive because she is watching it because she doesn’t have fingers.
I won’t tell you that men with strawberry blonde hair give me panic attacks.
I won’t tell you that I’m so afraid that anywhere we go, we’ll run into him, and there’s not enough oxygen in the world to fill up my lungs to scream loud enough until I can’t see him anymore.
I won’t tell you that car accidents will always leave me in tears because why do they fucking happen because I will always be looking for who is alive and who is not in car accidents I just want to see the body I just want to see who is breathing who is screaming I just want to understand who lives and who dies I just want to see if their body is actually her body if their fingers on the road are actually her fingers if I can touch them if I can see her brown eyes blink if I can see the EMTs on the road stay with her because she is alive because she is breathing because there is no reason to walk away and come back with a white hospital sheet because there is no reason to call me because she is there because why the fuck do car accidents happen because it’s not that hard to stay on the road because it’s not that hard to work things out because it’s not that hard to ask for help.
I won’t tell you that I am already mourning the day where we stop loving each other and start trying to not hate each other.
I won’t tell you that I am prepared to get a text from you that says I love you and a call from the police thirty minutes later.
I won’t tell you that I can fill up book after book after book with things I want you to know about me but they are things I won’t tell you and they are things I don’t think I will ever tell you because I want you to love me because I don’t want you to see me because you are the kind of person who decorates everything with yellow poppies and I am the kind of person who has meltdowns because someone was wearing glasses that looked too much like his because you played soccer for ten years and so did she because someone’s breath smelled too much like tobacco because it is September because someone had a difficult time prying open a walnut or forcing open a pistachio because a man looked at me for too long in the grocery store because it is raining because it is sunny because it is syllabus week because the TV is turned on too early in the morning because someone poured red wine because something smells like our laundry detergent because it is cloudy and winter and summer and I have work and I don’t and I’m here.