Take This The Wrong Way
2019-2020
by: Maria Burbato
You fall asleep holding my hand, or some feeble imitation of a hand-hold. This is a compromise. This is you meeting me in the middle. Your hand curls over mine like a clamshell, fingers twitching delicately across my knuckles. Your hot air blowing against my neck. It would be easy to say it. I like you but. I like you but it’s hard. I like you even when. In spite of. Because of. The bubble of heat in the space between our bodies, like an egg, prone to breaking. It is nestled in the gaps we are too mismatched to fill. I fool myself. I recall your thumb’s slow journey up and down my elbow. I am desperate. I insist that this means something, this means something now, it has to mean something. I remember smiling into your neck in the dark and
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I wonder if you could feel it, if you knew what that meant. Our quiet confessions in the night. Both of us sighing, relieved. I open my stupid raw red mouth to ask for something simple. I want you to know. I am. I want you to know that I. I am. But I hope that you. I hope that you are. I hope we can. Tell me how to finish this sentence. I am not good at loving anyone or anything. I made you kiss me to Elliott Smith, his most miserable tracks, like maybe I’m anticipating a tragedy. Why the fuck did I do that? He stabbed himself to death, you know. I have told you this story before because it reminds me of you. You are the only person who wouldn’t take that the wrong way. (Which is maybe the only way it should be taken.) The article I read called it “a last resort for people so low they no longer care about themselves.”
