Michael is Falling In Love
Michael is falling in love. He fills his backpack with flowers to meet her in the park. He makes a whole world from the bed he shares with her. Lately I find myself looking up more often at the final green of August oaks, the sunflowers’ bowed necks praying for me in the narrow gardens of the apartment complexes I pass as I walk home from the library. I am trying to take a page out of his book and love the world, despite. Michael savors the process. He puts in the months. He builds a foundation through committed yearning. Michael is writing poems about the wind in cards made of hand-marbled paper. Michael is going to the post office to mail her prints he made with stamps he carved himself. He texts me to ask if he should stamp a frog amongst the reeds. Michael is setting the bar. I watch with envy. Oh to experience a reciprocity of intensity. My grand gestures are always a horror, my wanting too extreme. Who will let their fear melt away long enough to hold me?
Grace fucked a comedian last month and can’t pay her student loans, so when I get off the J train I stop at the harassment bodega to buy us sour monkeys and “exotic” gummy lifesavers and she turns the lights blue so we can float in our own aquarium and I wonder when we’ll grow up. She talks about moving home like it’s tomorrow. I’ve always known she’ll leave me behind someday, I just wish she wouldn’t rub it in. She’s truly from a place, somewhere she’s proud of that claims her back. I’ll stay right here, swallowed by the city. Anonymous by choice. On Sunday night I overheard my father talking to my mother. I know what New York does to people. I’ve felt it too. But I promise you can be happy somewhere else. I never used to question that I belonged in this city alone. Is it truly the only place that can handle me? Maybe the speed is distracting. Maybe it would be the truest act of love to leave for a little while.
Michael is falling in love so he says I’m so light the spinning world might toss me off into the stars and how could I hate him for that? How could anyone? Why do I find desire holy through his eyes and grotesque through mine? I need to find a way to step outside this skin of shame. I am always telling other people it is okay to want largely, loudly, but when my heart shouts out to be seen, my new and choking fear pummels her into silence.
Olya’s off her meds and feels totally fine so we drink coffee on her fire escape and I tell her I think I’m gonna quit my job, if my novel is bad will you love me anyway, and why do people have to die, why do our parents have to get older, why do I feel like I’m running out of time, and she asks if I want to smoke some weed.
Naava quit her job. Taylor quit her job. Madi got a new job. Gabrielle got a new job. Sasha moved to Iowa. Al moved to South Carolina. Everybody is getting their masters degree and Michael is falling in love and I am a fawn of an adult. Go on, shoot my knees out from a distance like a coward. If you’re patient, I’m sure I’ll trip over a rock or slide off a cliff and do your job for you. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far. You should see my personal finances. I know what would be responsible but I want to fly. I live fast now, I always will, but it’s time to get serious about being deeply unserious. I’m packing my bags. I’m taking to the sky and listening to the song you wrote about sitting on your bedroom floor. I probably should smoke a little less / and I should see if I remember how to try my best. I am not a type of woman. I cannot pathologize myself — these days I leave as often as I am left. The weather in New York this week feels like writing an entire Ada Limón poem on a postcard and mailing it to a distant lover. If I have to be a type of anything, it’s a human who would do this. It’s a human who would scrape the bottom of her bank account just to kiss you three more times. Just. What a dismissive word. There’s nothing just about the smile in your eyes. There’s nothing just about the country between us. Michael is falling in love and my fingers are covered in ink again. Do you know how long I have waited to be so stained? I’m drinking whiskey alone in a red-lit basement on Avenue A while Juliet reads about pasta and the dark and the bass from the nightclub above us makes my bones shake and for once I believe in the future, and best of all it’s only a little because of you. For once I think I’d like to stick around. See how it all plays out.
I shouldn’t do this. I can’t do this. It’s not like it’ll ever work, anyway.
Lesbians always say it’ll never work. Chloé is angry because she loves me. She wants me to stop getting in my own way. There isn’t even an “it” yet, because you won’t allow it. Just let it happen.
Maybe it isn't life or death, just what I want. Just me. Kissing your cheek, again, again.
Michael is falling in love and I remember you telling me about the six espresso shots you had to drink to stay awake at your barista shift the morning after you unmade me for the first time so I tell him the best kind of exhaustion is the self-satisfied exhaustion of desire fulfilled. And because he is falling in love, Michael says:
exhaustion is the word
elated, breathless exhaustion
what a world this is
Mia Arias Tsang is a writer based in New York City. Her work explores how queer people try and fail to love each other. Her first collection, FRAGMENTS OF WASTED DEVOTION, is out now with Quilted Press. She lives in Queens with her cat, Peanut, and is working on a novel.