I Call You a Liar but I Have Never Told the Truth
People who can't read body language don't make sense to me,
one of us said, as if the sighs and nods of another were some kind of lesson to
be learned in childhood—the ABC's of boredom, the mathematics of discontent.
We watched her from across the room and there was a huge window behind her and
him and everyone. Outside people kept collapsing onto the ground in waves.
Everyone was concerned, they rushed to the fallen, but did nothing except
hover. Concern is the newest form of help. Concern makes you a good person.
Concern is an ambulance that keeps its sirens on all day but never picks anyone up.
I can't take being called kind, I told her. Twenty-eight is an impossible
number to wrap my mind around, it's like the twenty-eight times I tried to dial
his number but couldn't. That doesn't mean I called him. I just attempted to.
Twenty-eight tries doesn't make me brave. I'm not going to say that I am.
She can't stop being a nice person. She tries. She thinks that nice is like a
faucet: hot or cold, just switch it off. I want to tell her that back when I
was nice, I kept thinking the world was more frightening. Let everyone in and
you won't ever be able to kick them back out.
He told me once that he can't stop remembering. I didn't understand. It sounded
like a good thing, everything laid out in his mind. He told me it was like
stepping through a mirror and finding that the world you found is just like
this one, except that there's nothing there that you haven't already
experienced. I asked him what he'd want to forget first and he just looked at me.
You keep saying that "can't" is your favorite word. It's the negative
of what life is supposed to be. It's better than "won't" and less
harsh than "don't." I can't believe you sometimes. I shake my head in
disbelief, to choose a word like that out of so many more beautiful. But,
finally, maybe, when you tell me this, I can understand what it is that can't
be undone.
To This Half-Truth
When at 3AM our lips, our mouths, felt hot like tea. That one spiced kind that reminded you of
chai and reminded me of sticking cloves into oranges until my fingertips ached with indents.
I told you I thought I might be almost immortal, the kind that can die but just doesn’t, and you
thought then to check my pulse but couldn’t find it. Even the beat of my heart can tell when I’m
lying and never learned to bluff well for me.
When at 1AM, your fingers trailed up my skin, you told me you once thought you saw God but it
only turned out to be the shadow of a very tall tree. And you said that you used to be scared
of the way that darkness moved. It was like shadows dancing until they convulsed in waves, waves.
You are always waves when I think about you, too.
When at 2AM, you told me that you spoke another language but only almost, only sort of. I wondered
at almosts and sort ofs and the way that everything can spin away so easily when things aren’t concrete. The smell of oranges half remembered never quite reminds enough to warn. The citrus of your soap,
still the scent upon your skin, I can taste it on you.
When at 4AM, I think of saying something honest but never quite find the words I instead revert
to almost, to sort ofs, to maybes, to mights. Here’s the thing, though, listen to the thuds of my pulse
and you will learn not to believe me either.
My Year as a Medium
I once went home to find the dead crowding into my bed. They tossed and turned all night, stole
the covers, talked in their sleep. They said the names of lost lovers over and over until I almost
believed that they were people I too had lost. Sometimes I dreamt the same dreams as the dead.
They dreamt as one and I fell into them as easily as one might fall back into the bed of an ex-lover
who you never see but still remember the breath of against your skin.
They dreamt in tastes. Pulling candy down from off the top shelves. They were so sweet. Tiny
chocolate bears with tummies of milk. Placed them on our tongues and let them melt. The sugar
was electric. It caused us to shiver. Of the taste of river water gulped, of the taste of tea leaves
bitter and rich and filled with the future, of the taste of sweat off another’s skin.
They dreamt in sounds. It comes to us like flashes of ecstatic light, the blood of saints, the way
it wraps and breaks us up. Of the sound of rain echoing down the sides of the house, of the sound
of whispers into ears and the breath was hot against our skin, of the sound of palms being read
in the version of our lives where every line stretched on forever and wrapped around our hands
over and over again.
They dreamt in lightning and ice and the electric pulse of skin meeting skin. They dreamt of hands.
Of mouths and lips.
They dreamt of silence and the way dirt tasted so bitter and salty.
The way that ashes sound.
I wished I could sleep at night without their arms embracing me; they seem so cold and, yet, still
burnt me to fever. I wished I could sleep without the weight of them surrounding me.
They dreamt of silence but screamed at night. I was no comfort to them, so I just dreamt along.
I left them once for days I spent pacing with open eyes; they seemed to forgive me for this. Please forgive me for this.
Chloe N. Clark’s work appears in Apex, Booth, Hobart, and more. She teaches college composition, bakes many things, and writes for Nerds of a Feather and Ploughshares. Find her @PintsNCupcakes.