elegy to glass
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when she comes to kiss you, wrap yourself in white paper or what sheets and pull her close to stain whatever you imagined was the thing still keeping you clean. crash your body over hers. seastorm your wrists. shipwreck your intestines. shipwreck your past. the future has wet and dry sand. make your bed in it. clutch the memory with both hands. push it over her chest. rub it until it dissolves. find the holes. badger your hands under her skin. the bumps on her heart will language themselves.
—"spilling apples" by anis mojgani
...
1.
The most you know at the moment is that you're coughing up blood. It's red on your pink dress and you cannot breathe so you keep coughing and coughing, and someone somewhere is saying something to you, or trying to say something to you. You've swallowed glass. You suppose you are trying to cough it up but it is stuck as shards and tearing your lungs.
You're coughing up blood, and you are sure this is how you'll be remembered after you die.
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2.
You pray away the stitches on the top of your hands. It doesn't work but your spine seems like far too big a request to make so you try to close your eyes hard enough so it hurts and whisper your requests fervently.
Eventually they take your stitches out because your hands have healed. There are scars and you think this equates to your prayers being left, scarlet webbed, at the altar.
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3.
Rachel loves you.
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4.
You want to kiss her.
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5.
You learn to walk again, and it isn't fun whatsoever. It exhausts you. It hurts you. The alternative is exhausting and hurtful so you picture yourself a heron—thin-legged, statue-still—and fall asleep too early instead.
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6.
When you get to Yale you don't know how to make the taste of blood in your mouth go away.
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7.
You kiss Rachel before you've stopped drowning and before she knows she doesn't have it in her to save you.
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8.
You meet Spencer eventually. She has pretty brown hair and pretty brown eyes and she knows more languages than you. One night you're walking in the rain together and she buys a moroccan mint tea to share and as you take it from her hand your fingers touch and then you bring your mouth to the plastic tip of the cup and taste her lipgloss. You sit on her left at an a cappella show that a few of your friends meet you at, and you splash in puddles on the way back toward the dorms so that she has to hold your hand. A boy wants her to come over but she says no and allows you to follow her back to her room. She tells you I didn't want this with you we're supposed to be friends Quinn we're supposed to be best friends this will never work. You kiss her anyway. She says What are we doing and you say Kissing and you say You want to kiss me back and she says I do. She does.
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8.
Spencer tastes like toothpaste and in most ways you wonder if you taste like sin.
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9.
You cut open your wrist but not deep enough to do anything but leave another linger that you cannot pray away.
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10.
I remember coughing up blood you tell her I remember it and it hasn't gone away you were supposed to take it away Spencer you were supposed to.
.
11.
Spencer tells you Fuck off I don't want anything to do with you I cut myself up to fit into every broken bit of you and I loved you more than I ever should have.
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12.
Santana tells you that Spencer is full of shit.
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13.
For a brief time during the summer you meet Beatrice. She's sweet and funny and very cute with wispy limbs and short hair and freckles and she sits on the floor with you on the worst days and doesn't ask you to move or eat. She goes to Dartmouth and is only with you for six weeks but you fall in love with her in the nicest way. You give her your favorite t-shirt and lots of handwritten letters and she brings you macaroons for breakfast. You sing to her the day she leaves, on the porch of the apartment she's been subletting, and she hugs you for a long long while. Quinn you love so holy is what she says as you walk away.
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14.
During a workshop training for your tutoring job senior year they ask if anyone has had any experience dealing with students with special needs and you don't say anything except that if someone is wheelchair bound you shouldn't ignore the wheelchair and you should always ask your students Does everyone have what they need anyway.
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15.
You kiss Rachel.
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16.
She does not taste like blood. It is wintertime and right now she tastes like hot chocolate.
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17.
Your father's voice is still sometimes there on quiet Saturdays when it's rainy and he says You're dead to me you're a sinner you're going to hell all you ever do is hurt the people you supposedly love.
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18.
You don't tell Rachel but she can sense it because you bend your back to the shape of a question mark and she doesn't tell you to stop slouching instead she makes you jasmine tea and you watch Donnie Darko on the couch and lay back against her chest. She lets you feel her breathe and all the glass in your apartment is still intact.
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19.
You want to marry her.
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20.
When you are twenty-six your lungs get infected again and you start to cough up blood one night in bed and then next you wake up in the hospital and Rachel is asleep holding your hand. She wakes up when you squeeze it and Rachel says You've been on a ventilator after surgery for a day and a half. You're in so much pain and she says They wanted you to wake up before they give you more pain meds I'm so sorry and then she doesn't let you apologize back so you say I love you instead and she cries and kisses you even though you're sure you taste like blood.
.
21.
You do ask her to marry you one morning while you're having breakfast at home. She's sitting at your little table in one of your t-shirts and a thong and her hair is curly and you kiss her forehead and then get the ring from behind towels in the linen closet and walk back to the kitchen and get down on one knee. She says Yes before you even ask anything and you put the ring on her finger and she sits down on the floor and lays you back against it and makes love to you like you're the least broken thing in the world.
.
22.
Nora is born and she is so perfect you're afraid to touch her because your hands seem like wells of ink compared to her skin but then Rachel smiles at you and she's crying and you're crying and you hold Nora and she's so light and so lovely and the most profound thing because she is very much yours.
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23.
You have back surgery when Nora is three and she comes to visit you in the hospital afterward with Rachel and Nora climbs up gently on the bed with a stack of get well pictures she's made you and says Mommy it was so quiet without you at home I'm so glad you're okay I love you so much before she clumsily kisses your cheek.
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24.
The most you know at the moment is that you're sitting in the audience of Rachel's show with your son and your daughter and your chest hurts but only because things are beautiful and your wife is so talented the entire theater is holding their breaths.
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25.
Perhaps the glass inside you is stained but Rachel knows it and doesn't seem to want to do anything but stare at it in wonder. She runs her thumb along your lower lip and places her palm as cradle for your jaw and kisses you and smiles and says Baby you always taste like roses.