A Time When We Are Naught

I am already married by the time I don’t meet you.

I’ve already broken up with him and several guys before I even meet you.

I am living in an apartment in Brooklyn with him and his mates as we’re planning our future.

You’re so rough and pushy when we first meet. You shout at people on the street.

I’m applying to the UN. You don’t want me to work because you say that we already don’t see each other enough. But I’ve wanted to work there since I was in the first grade and drinking mango juice at my boyfriend’s house while his mom drilled us in long division on flash cards.

“Just because it’s your job to keep people a certain distance away from this area doesn’t mean you have to yell at them.”

We’re going to have kids after I get a job there.

You’re less angry than you used to be. Your shirt is always buttoned up to the top. You’re embarrassed of your body.

I’m still afraid of men. I get along with your mates. You don’t like that I don’t leave the flat. How am I going to do that when we have a baby? I can’t stay in our room forever.

I think I’m your first or second girlfriend? You’re always sweating.

It doesn’t fall apart.

None of the other guys are sweating through their uniforms. I know you’re hairy like an animal.

We’re finally able to go on a date without being stalked.

You don’t believe that a beautiful woman could be into a hairy, fat guy, but you’re sweet.

I’m sitting down at some Georgian place with you. Have we seen a movie together? We’re speaking another language.

You’re applying for jobs at the FBI. The salary is higher.

My health isn’t as bad. I can remember things more.

Our first date is to the Met. You’ve never really been to a place like that before we met one another.

You still mumble in Spanish because you’re embarrassed of anything that you don’t know a lot about.

You’re not afraid I’ll leave you for a woman anymore.

You’re afraid I’ll leave you for a woman because every other guy before you has felt that way.

It didn’t stop when I moved in, but well, I’m not sure it would have stopped, but you would have at least believed women could genuinely be bisexual.

——————————

You blur with the next boyfriend who blurs with the next boyfriend who blurs into the next.

I can barely remember any of my pasts. Their names recede from my memory like shadows at noon day, crawling under the roots of trees.

All the glittering leaves above my head like the diamonds in the bracelets you wrapped around my wrists.

I can’t tell one future as it is now, let alone two, left alone in fifty.

I think of our kids. None of us ever had. I think of making you waffles in the morning and of living in his apartment.

I am a mother of a four or five year old. I go about my day as a stay at home mom. My book addiction continues, but now I play audiobooks with my child around and call it homeschooling. You’re at work or he’s at work or another he is there that is my husband.

I am not alone in a room filled with so many regrets that stem from the fault of another;

like to a plant that bursts forth from concrete in an ugly place;

like to one that breathes its vile bloom under the eaves of construction,

the urine of the city in high summer’s heat.

It is a simmering anger in me.

Here in this other world, my son has just overgrown my first memory of him. My husband or another husband or another man is coming home in four hours. It is 1PM.

I am in the kitchen. I am leaving for the grocery store. Our house is like the life we dreamed. It is so unlike you thought it would be; in our kitchen, a composter and a standing garden for fresh vegetables. A little robot vacuum that putters about all day. An Apple tablet that serves as a video phone is on the counter.

There is no meat in our house. The old jars of prayer candles to Sts. Michael and Jude are our glasses. I don’t like western cutlery as much as chopsticks.

A fridge filled with foods you never grew up with, but that you’ve grown accustomed to eating because you love your poor-healthed wife who reads in so many languages and sings so well.

I sit down at piano with our son and play and one day, I play the guitar you’ve purchased me.

I don’t miss having my male following because it is not a series of failed relationships, but just mama’s ex-beau’s from before she settled down.

“Oh there was the one who was so handsome. It was annoying when women would walk up and ask him out right in front of me as if I weren’t even there.

“Oh, then there were the ones who bought me chocolate-dipped fruit all the time…and jewelry.

“The one I cheated on five times and who didn’t believe me when I said, after the ninth time, I probably thought I could really stop because then it meant he would really let me get away with everything. (I miss your warmth.)

“The fan club that would buy me lunches or dinners whenever I asked…

“The two men I dated at the same time, I mean the two that knew about one another at the same time, not the ones who didn’t, it was always fun kissing one and then the other when saying goodbye as I left one of their houses.”

There are so many others who I can barely remember. That guy I dated for two weeks because I cried on his shoulder after something had scared me. The one who proposed after one date and then disappeared. The other who disappeared before the first date. And then the others that disappeared.

And then the emptiness that led to this future where my beautiful son by any one of them has never been nor ever seen. To him it would be like an untouched, foreign country, a map of which his fingers had only ever grazed the inside of my stomach.

——————————

This story is a bit different, rough and messy. I haven’t written something to publish in close to two years. I’m playing around with different styles.