BABY LOVE
PB -
There weren't any empty seats on the train today, so I had to stand. I hate standing - one arm hooked around a silver pole and the other hanging limp by my side as I try not to look anyone in the eye. I have no choice but to stare at the window, made into a black mirror as we zip through the tunnels under Manhattan. I stare at my own pale face, floating disembodied in the glass, white as Marley's ghost and nearly as damned, and think, because there is nothing else to do.
I think of orange juice and pancakes and sticky syrup fingers, kittens and ribbons and little balls of yarn. I think these things to distract myself from the whistling gulf of anxiety homed at the base of my belly. I am encumbered with worries, weighed down by their chains, counting my stressors link by link. I worry about my mother and father. I worry I'll miss my stop or that I already have. I worry the world is burning. I worry I will never know the sugary touch of love. Will I ever know love? Will I ever sink my teeth into its pink peach-flesh and suck the sweetness from its stony pit? I lick the phantom taste of fruit from my lips and worry I've aged past my prime, that my heart has spoiled like milk and no amount of candied kisses can un-curdle it.
Then I think of your smiling face - your crooked teeth and your boyish charm and the funny hump in your nose - and the black clouds of my worries are parted by the brilliance of your smile.
I feel cupid over my shoulder when you are near, an arrow poised between his chubby cherub fingers. He shoots - he scores. The skin melts from my bones to bare the truth of my naked soul. It frightens me to be vulnerable, and yet I want to peel away my layers and offer you my heart like a pomegranate on a platter; bleeding, sweet, and soft in the middle.
And maybe this is all a girlish delusion, an imagined fancy to find comfort in. Maybe these feelings are only as long-lasting as my drugstore stockings that rip when I bend. But you aren’t imaginary and my stockings were good while they lasted. You are flesh and bone, crooked teeth and boyish charm, and I am caught like an animal in a trap – bucking, bleating, bleeding – thrashing until I find I’ve turned myself inside out and shown you my deepest, blackest secrets and my ugly, throbbing heart. I am offering it to you. I do not know why, I don't even know that I am doing it, and maybe that’s what love is, less of a choice and more of an instinct. It tastes like mauve-colored ache and strawberry shortcake, but I am willing to swallow it whole if you will, too. I am milk-hearted but you are peach-flesh and maybe together we can make something delicious, if not everlasting.
Yours, M
McKenna Ryan, 20, USA ✯
“McKenna Ryan is a magpie who collects words like trinkets and strings them together, weaving tales of girlish fancy and Poe-esque macabre. She is an aspiring novelist, but for now, she writes.”