Seams

At 9:47 pm on Friday, I fell in a pile of trash. Two knees bleeding, one existential crisis brewing.

But, we’ll get to that.

First, I want to tell a story from 5 months back. I call this story: “The Time I Tried to Say Hi to an Attractive-Looking Man at a Concert.” It is 8:14 pm on a Tuesday, and I am alone at an Alessia Cara concert in Madison Square Garden. I had bought my tickets 30 minutes earlier, inspired by the ever-mounting discomfort wrought upon by unemployment and a delayed mattress delivery. I had just moved to New York City, and in an effort to distract myself from this discomfort, I decided to go to a concert. Alone. Wearing a skirt two sizes too small, which was only being held together by a hair tie and good faith. I had sprinted to the concert, so I sat in the concert hall sort of heaving and bloody red. I was also desperately trying to stop myself from burping loudly, as I had just chugged a bottle of sparkling water and the carbonation was now saying: “Yeah, fuck you.”

With soaking armpit hairs clinging to the soft inside of my upper arm, I finally collect myself and begin to look around. The crowd is definitely 70% pre-teens, 10% parental supervision and 20% conglomerate of annoyingly happy looking couples. I force down another belch. I eventually glance over to my right, and it is then that my sweat runs dry and my face begins to flush.

The most beautiful man I have ever seen is sitting alone next to me. So beautiful that I almost burst into tears right there.

He wears an olive sweater. His lower eyelashes are thicker than the top ones, which in turn curves his eyes around comely hazel irises. I know I have stopped breathing because a brewing belch lurches my abdomen back into feeling. I am just able to mask it with a cough, and I gulp in oxygen.

I am trying my hardest not to openly gape at him. I bite my nails to keep my mouth occupied. I think I should try to greet him aka make him fall madly in love with me. Okay, Aly- this is your motherfuckin’ time. I quickly devise a list of potential opening greetings:

·      “Hello, could I interest you in my collection of pictures of poetry I found on Instagram?”

·      “The name’s Higgins.”

·      “Hey, sexy.” (*wiggles eyebrows*)

·      “Hi.”

I’ll go with the last one. I start breathing and decide to count to ten. I tell myself that I will say hi when I get to ten. But, just after “2”, I freak out and instead turn to the mother-daughter duo sitting on my other side. I ask them if they are visiting the city. This leads to a twenty-minute anecdote about New Jersey traffic. I finally exit myself from the conversation by murmuring, “Ugh cars, am I right?”, and newly invigorated by the social pains of pretending to be interested in a long anecdote about New Jersey traffic, I begin to lean toward the attractive man on my right. Just as I tuck my hair behind my left ear for good luck, the lights dim and Alessia appears on stage. I am still turned toward him and am about to try a last-minute attempt at a greeting when she begins to sing. In this moment, the beautiful man raises his arms as if in prayer. Then he begins to belt every single word.

And he sings like a holy-fucking angel.

I can’t hide my gaping anymore. I’ve never seen someone so into a concert. As he sings, he grabs his heart with such ferocity that I’m convinced a gospel choir is just going to pop up beside him. I spend the concert like this, dancing exhilarated to the music of an unexpected duet. Halfway through the concert, Alessia stops the music. In between her own short breathing, she tells us to hug a loved one next to us- some bullshit about ‘building connectedness’.

I immediately tense up. I prefer my hugging like I prefer my contact with animals: distant and without sentiment. People all around me begin to hug each other, and I pass a sideways glance at the beautiful man next to me. He catches my eye and nudges my arm, “You’re close enough to a loved one, right?” Just as I am about to reply with an excellently paced flirtatious laugh, he reaches out to pull me in for the hug. I move to try to wrap my arms around his shoulders, but my sweater gets caught on my skirt, so my elbow ends up being thrust into my throat like a chicken wing. He holds my chicken wing and me for 5 seconds; I can feel the strong warmth of his shoulders. The frays of his beard are in my nose.

He pulls away. I want to say something profound, yet all I muster is, “This concert’s great, right?” (WAY TO BLOW HIS MIND, ALY). But, the man isn’t listening. He is looking toward the stage and whispering something I can’t quite understand. He is so obviously holding awestruckness in his dimpled smile. I can see his round eyes, burning and soft. It is then that I understand. This was never going to be our love story.

For him, it was always about Alessia.

I take another swig of my carbonated water and as always, keep dancing on my own.

~

Let’s go back to 9:47 pm last Friday. At this point, I have been living in New York City for 5 months. I still have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, but I feel excited at the weight of the city, at the way it forces you to look at its vastness. In this city, you must always walk with the moon in your mouth, as the only way to fully see the city is to look up, above the skyscrapers. As an effect of looking up, your mouth rounds into the shape of the moon, wet and hot inside your lips.

On Friday at 9:47 pm, it is bitterly cold and I am fifteen minutes late and I am wearing boots slightly too big. I am walking with the moon in my mouth in the East Village when I go fucking down. I had stepped on my shoelace. My knees hit first- the concrete tearing through jeans and skin. My phone goes flying and shatters somewhere on the sidewalk. The trails mix I had just bought pours over me. I land in a pile of garbage bags. Some guy yells, “Are you okay?”

What I want to say: “PHYSICALLY OR EXISTENTIALLY? BOTH ARE A GOD DAMN ‘NAH’ OKAY.”

What I actually say: “Yep.”

My knees haven’t begun to sting yet. I'd actually fallen a month prior and bloodied my knees. The wounds had just fully healed yesterday. I realize I am wearing my favorite jeans. My roommate will later tell me, “Shit, you really fell in trash in this trash city.”

I lie in the garbage. My eyes begin to well, and so, I close them.

With shuttered eyes, I am suddenly back in the place where I first decided to move to the city 7 months ago. I lie in the fetal position amongst yellowed grass; my hair is long here. I stare without purpose at the meeting of sky and land. In this place, the sky is wide and unobstructed, so even though I am in the fetal position, I can still see the whole sky. It is just before sunset. A rejection email sits opened in my back pocket. A host of recent dumb decisions hovers above my shoulders. I’m not sure if I like myself. The ache of being stuck and sort of sad and rudely lonely and so very anxious rests in my bones. I know, without any real specificity, the decision comes to me in this moment. Just then, my eyes begin to well. I always feel so relieved when my eyes begin to well. With eyes welling, I can say to myself: look baby, you must be so full the world had no choice but to burst through your seams.

It is in this fetal position that I begin scripting a little something of a love letter to myself because if not a love letter, what else? In the bend of my left ribs, I write: you are sexiest in your sweater and glasses, an inside joke brewing in your eyes. Within my crooked big toe, I say: you can be a total asshole, and you should work on that. From my belly, I craft: you like the way names taste at the edge of your tongue. And: you crave being reckless, yet you also do not know how to give up control. And: dancing unbounded is your favorite way to swallow joy. In my upper thigh, I write: the sky where you grew up turned purple and big before sunset. It always gave you lilacs as the night enveloped it whole.

And to my collarbone, my bony, sweet collarbone, I divulge: your collarbone is the best place to be kissed because you must stop hunching your shoulders in order to let someone reach you there.

I come back. It is 9:48 pm on a Friday. I am lying in trash. I open my welling eyes and see the grey sky of city buildings. I close them again to see that sky giving me lilacs. And, I still do not know what the fuck I am doing, but it is in this moment that I finish that little something of a love letter I started 7 months ago. I think I will hold the last part in my welling eyes. I say:

I love you even when you’re not brave.