Universes
This is a real weird one that came from a writing prompt in my workshop a few weeks ago. Feels like a fever dream.
I’m thinking about your baby toe. The tiny one that you like to wrap over the neighboring toe for comfort. Something you’ve done since you were a kid you say. I’m thinking of my tiny toe and how you told me there was a callus there from my too tall shoes that I always wear.
I’m thinking of the little things that new partners discover about you that you didn’t even realize were there and how different we are with new people. Each relationship its own private universe.
I’m thinking I like who I am with you - this version of me - that has emerged from a year of dust and transition. I’m thinking of the space between who we are now and who we were then. And where the in between goes.
I’m thinking of the memories and lives we lived with other people. Where do they get stored other than our brains? Is there some tiny tugboat hiding out in our head moving memories from one side to the other? Or are they just traveling in outer space now? The hours logged watching tv on the brown leather couch, the miles of sushi, the fights where ice was thrown and then doors were slammed and then silence happened and grew like moss covering rocks, like weeds filling in the empty spaces where words didn’t fit anymore. Where does all of that go? And what happens to a memory when the other person isn’t there to remember it anymore?
In any case I’d rather be here with you - in this soft place with fresh sheets and the new versions of who we are - with too much coffee and never enough sleep and our brains feeling like teenagers but our bodies telling a different story. I’d take you over all the empty space between what was and what is and all the lives I’ve lived in between. Even though it still scares the shit out of me to say it out loud. I’d rather risk my head and heart getting hurt a million times again than not say it.
There is a universe in your tiny toe and I tell you I hate feet and you tell me how American that is - but there is a universe hiding in between your toes. Maybe that’s where all of our memories go. And I am learning to embrace the gnarled and ugly and rotting. Because even the ugly is beautiful. There is a universe living in your fingertips and maybe if I stop trying to see it I’ll finally understand it.
We’re all just energy she says to me and I believe it. It’s why the temperature shifts when you walk in a room. It’s the loud slap of the chalkboard erasers announcing themselves - ringing down the hallway, setting off the fire alarm, getting caught in the bathroom stall, smoking cigarettes behind the football field, where your tiny toes once ran and played and rode your bike home and slept under Star Wars sheets and ate American cheese sandwiches with mayo on Wonder bread.
Your tiny toes tugging at my heart, knocking that wall down, saying let me in, let me in, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll turn into a tiny teapot ready to explode at the sight of you.
There’s a universe in there. Somewhere.
You are awesome!
Fun!