I wish we had fucked. Wet, sloppy, no condom. That kind of fucking. Barebacked buck wild. Carpet burn and beard rash on the inner thighs. But we didn’t. Instead we touched tongues and kissed each other’s fingers. Felt collarbones and traced cracks in each other’s lips. Tasted teeth and told the truth. Things otherwise kept quiet like failed jobs and being a bad daughter. Made eye contact then broke it. Left after last call to sit in the front seat of your car holding hands. Talked until there was nothing to say, dragged the side of my face along every part of your chest. Sat in silence watching the lights of the parking lot dance with the pavement. I got greedy, my mind fell in love in a minute. Couldn’t help it. Already missed you on the drive home. Tried to tell myself it was only a first date, that you might not call. That I might miss you for the rest of my life. And I never learned how to miss someone in a way that didn’t involve overnight shipping a noose to hang myself with. I miss people from a pit in my stomach.
I knew I was done for when I got home, my skin numb to the water from the showerhead even when it was as hot as it could go. The third day, still with no word, I started testing my numbness on the stove. Seeing what it would take to get feeling back. It scared me to be so free of pain, to be released from things like pissing, the pitch of a dog’s bark, hot coffee, and breathing. So, I spent a night in the waiting room of a hospital with four second degree burns. And the next day my dog still didn’t bother my ears, I didn’t notice if I had needed the bathroom, the coffee tasted like air, and breathing felt more like a meaningless routine.
A week, no word, desperate. Walking down the aisle to receive communion from the same priest who told my grandma she would be going to hell for masturbating and having three unbaptized grandchildren. I held out my bandaged hands for the bread, said “Amen” and told the people next to me that God was with them. They said the same, but it was bullshit. God is with you, I met him that night in your throat. Mass was a replacement for the psychiatric appointment I couldn’t afford. It didn’t help. I spent most of my time in church fantasizing that when I turned my phone back on there would be ten missed calls from you.
On the tenth day, after reading two terrible poems at the bookstore on Laguna Dr, I told my mom you were probably bipolar. She said you were obviously married. I cried that night thinking about your wife, wondering if she was waiting for you the night of our date. If she watched you slide out of the jeans I had just dry humped. If you fell asleep smelling her. The next day I hit my shins hard with the opening of a lotion bottle and felt nothing everywhere.
As more days passed things got boring, waiting for you to wake up one day and want me. My writing got worse. Brought you with me everywhere I went, to the liquor store, the coffee shop, gas stations, dive bars, and clubs. Baristas, bouncers, and bartenders wished they had guns in their pockets when they saw me walk up. I am slowly getting feeling back in my fingers. But every room, car, and toilet still rocks back and forth. My feet aren’t steady yet. I haven’t gotten my body back from the night in your car, it’s stuck thick in the smog staring out a fogged up windshield.
Katie Haley is a twenty something writer from California who enjoys creating honest and emotional work. Most recently her words can be read in Daughter Zine, Paloma Magazine, Limit Experience Journal as well as her self indulgent substack entitled Somewhere.