Writing by Sophie Rose // Illustrations by Lola Dunham
Writing by Sophie Rose // Illustrations by Lola Dunham
The question becomes and remains and becomes again
How do I tell a man I’m falling in love with him
“Hi, welcome, love
Welcome to my love”
My love
(This pretty little thing!
It’s the very best
And the very worst
Ultimately the very core
Of me)
Coats my throat
Prickles my nose
Tickles my fingers, sparkles my toes
Paints my ears (pink)
Bubbles through my lips
Shimmies down my legs
It’s newly-born and it’s thrilled and it’s urgently now
Murmuring in my ear
Murmuring velvet and fire
When do I get to meet him
Shhh
I’ve heard so much about him
I know
How his deep, dark, dark-blue eyes swallow you up and how you feel a buzzy pride whenever you make him laugh because his laugh is just so nice and how he nestles his forehead into your neck when he’s asleep and how he wears his wistful introspection on his heart-shaped lips, lips that make you feel like you’re home when they touch yours
Yes
I heard all that from you
Yes
I want to meet him, I want to see all the things
I know, I know
So when’s it happening then?
It’s not
What do you mean
I don’t know if he wants to meet you
I don’t think he wants you
I’m sorry
Quiet, the loudest quiet, and a whisper
I’ll go, then
The question becomes and remains and becomes again
How do I tell a man I’m falling in love with him
My love
(This pained little thing!
It’s the very worst
And the very best
Ultimately the very core
Of me)
Doesn’t want me to forget
As if I could
It didn’t go
It has nowhere to go
It saturates me with its wet sadness
Fuck off, I hiss
It says nothing
It wraps itself around my stomach
It snakes through my lungs, it bites, leaves gashes
It drips forlornly, obnoxiously, overdramatically off my heart
My love
My poor love
Mourning someone it never got to know
It’s too heavy now to lift
To give away
To all the someones who need it more
Who want it more
Like me, maybe
My love
Saunters through my sleep
Stares me straight in the face as it
Clangs pots and pants
I growl
Why are you mad at me!
Clangs louder
Why aren’t you mad at him!
He’s the one who didn’t want us!
A pause
He’s the one who didn’t want us.
A pause and then a broken shiver
A resigned sway
Keeling back onto its heels to stare up at me
No more clangs
Pity, drifting somewhere in the hurt and anger
You didn’t give him the chance to want us
Because you can’t believe that anyone ever will
SLAM
A door inside me shuts
I’m not sure where
But what am I to do
When I’ve known from the start that this love
This one
This exact
Slow, feisty, lush, pensive, conceited, gorgeous, flawed
Special
Precise
Love of mine
Was doomed
I kept it at bay as long as I could
I tried desperately not to notice it
It’s not that I’m afraid of love
Not as a rule
It’s that I just knew it was misplaced here
I knew from day one that ultimately those deep, dark, dark-blue eyes would only bring me hurt
So yes
The second the love triumphantly broke through the barricades I’d thrown together
(I threw them together hastily, anxiously
I didn’t want it to get through but
Did I?)
The second I felt it enthusiastically introduce itself to every organ in my body; the second my stomach went weak with it
I can only describe that second as
Ethereal
Surreal
Terrible
Knowing that something was born specifically to end
The question becomes and remains and becomes again
How do I tell a man I’m falling in love with him
This precise love of mine
Knows there’s no use asking anymore
It mingles now
With the other precise loves
Ten years of precise loves
Still living in me
They never left
Well
Some left
They all came back
One is New-England-sky-after-a-rainstorm blue
One is loud-crackling-fire-embers red
One is water-drops-on-a-palm-leaf green
Makeup-smudge lavender, light-hitting-snow silver, a soft shade of bumblebee yellow
No two loves are coloured the same
They dance back and forth between parts of me
They tease; poke each other hard and run away laughing
They mope alone in dark corners
They jump into my brain and fight over my buttons with impish glee
(Control panel chaos)
They plan road trips through my veins
They host little love BBQs; potluck-style
They yell and yell and yell as though no matter how much they yell I still can’t hear them
They lie down on their bellies in the center of my head, chins resting on hands, feet waving in the air, gazing through my eyes, watching my life
Seeing what I see
They are children
They are immortal
They have a (my) lifetime to exist
So they find ways to pass the time
They make friends
They cry
They do what they can to alleviate the ache
The one that comes with all being cooped up in me
Instead of out there with all the precise hims
But a precise love can never truly leave me, not for good
It will just change shape as it needs to
And if it gets to leave it will always return
Some of these loves
When it was time
I was the one who pulled them back, packaged them nicely up with ribbons and stored them gently in the empty spaces
Some came barreling back in, high speed, panting, gossipy, knocking the air from my chest
Some walked, politely, calmly, rang the doorbell, waited patiently for me to let them in
But most inch back on hands and knees, soaked in grief, crawl weepily into my arms, hungry to be held, hungry to forget
What am I supposed to do with you, my lost loves
I’m in that twice-a-day moment between awake and asleep
Cradling them reluctantly in the space around my heart
They’re quiet
But listening
What can I do
How can I help you get home
We are home
Right?
Right but if you’re already home
Why do all of us feel this alone
The question becomes and remains and becomes again
What do you do with all the empty and all the full
From all the falling in loves
