Witches Mag, Issue #5: Time

Scenes From an Expiring Relationship

By Jaclyn Griffith Time suspends around us in the spring, but I can still hear the clock ticking. Over FaceTime, I cannot stop crying. Bernie Sanders is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, and my boyfriend is moving to Michigan. I drop my phone in my bed and run to the bathroom. My boyfriend’s digital face plummets into my teal velvet duvet, and I sob until the wind gets knocked out of me. For seven months I have tried to outrun my feelings for him, but my love has finally caught up with me, finally caught up and crushed me into a dirty pile of tissues on my bathroom floor.

Are you okay? he asks when I return to the phone.

Yeah, I’m literally fine, I say. I’m so happy for you. *** We meet for the first time on a rainy Thursday in the fall. We drink pink cocktails on red stools in a bar that sits on aberrant cobblestones. I am a half hour late, and he offers to pay the check.

By the second drink, I am already telling him, You’re applying to way too many grad schools. By the end of the night, he is already telling me, I want to make out with you until my Uber gets here. I lean against a black wrought iron fence and slip my hands inside his leather jacket, where they rest naturally on his waist. I have ninety seconds until a silver Camry pulls up and takes him away from me.

Six weeks and eight dates pass. He listens to my stories on a bench outside an observatory in October wind, at my favorite cafe where I write and drink tea on Monday afternoons, in my passenger seat before work, at a Korean restaurant with no other customers that shuts down the following week.

58