I’m reading American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance
Hayes, in the driver’s seat of a hot
car while waiting for my friend who I’ve taken to the dentist because she’s got
a flat tire. The words in the book are a conversation I am having with Black
men, only I don’t speak. I listen. Then, I text you. We write something funny.
Something sexual. You say something about
your body, a body I find beautiful. I make a promise not to consume you. We talk
about healthy food and how hard it is to stick to a routine. You lament the
lines you’ve lost on your body after surgery—the way your muscles used to rise
and fall in their topography, so easy to map. I lament the lines I can’t find
in my head to make sense of things. I tell you I will not dissect you and leave
you in pieces. You do not respond. Just
say no if it’s not what you want. I will stop asking. The bell on my phone
is silent. Then, as if waking from a dream, the phone shakes. Sorry! No that's cool. I am prepping for a
meeting now, so I am all over the place. Of course. I enjoy chill time.
I
smile, relieved.
Sorry
to interrupt your day, I say.
Nah,
the day interrupted our conversation.
And what of you is embedded in the pages
I’ve just read? Is it the ways in which someone has tried to erase you and will
try again while I love on you as if that could make you live longer? But I’m
not saving you. You save yourself every day. I don’t even know if you
think about it that way. I am a woman. I look over my shoulder, too. It’s
reflexive. But I am white. I am not in as much danger, though I’ve felt a man’s
hands on my body uninvited more than once. It’s you who throws out the
line to me, fifty and single, a bit out to sea in an ocean of loss. I taste the
sweetness that you are and digest the parts you allow me to. You take your
insides with you and leave me a shell, but its shape has formed itself around
you. As I explore its angles and interior spaces I get a whiff of you,
feeling—inside.
