capitoline

It’s so humid that the windows to my room are heavily fogged with condensation.

I feel the water creep out of my ear after I take a shower and think of sustained relationships and reasons for leaving parts of myself in different hiding places—underneath seats on the airplane, in between rocks, inside a sock, the crease behind your ear.

On the other side of the world you are maybe clearing out your throat and thinking, briefly, about something that happened when we were with each other. Maybe you are thinking about a cove, or a dog with long hair who likes to swim. Maybe you’re thinking about watching National Geographic while really thinking about something else. Maybe you are thinking about showering. Right after a cigarette.

I don’t know. Outside it is humid and so dark that when I turn the lights on, I can’t see out the window.

The world feels sticky.

It is nearly impossible to know both:

.

I feel nothing

I am nothing

and yet, with the magpies that I see with their blue-rimmed wings, a vein underneath my chest lifts; there is the sky, completely covered with clouds, and air that tastes like salt. There is a sweltering breeze that seems to move through me. There is ambivalence, and there is also the feminine.

I miss your body curling against mine, like an orange peel.

I miss the feeling of your warm chest against my ear; when I listened to your heartbeat thudding itself into my being, I would marvel at the heat between your skin and mine, the softness of your skin, and how I felt so comfortable resting there.

Late in the night the sirens outside would ask us to come out for a smoke, I’d hold on to your waist with one arm and bury my face in your side. The light in the room would draw me to sleep. I would push you away when you started snoring before snuggling back into you, repeating this pattern until I fell into a deeper sleep and dreams of two bodies holding each other close.

I wake up with a question

Every day I wake up with a question, an Are you there? lingering on the soft patch of muscle in my mouth. I remember waking up to you, the smell your body fell into while you were sleeping, the heaviness of a limb on mine, the kind of warmth that only a human body can give. Every day I wake up with the mild bitterness of memories asked to pause, the saltiness of your skin, the sticky sweet of sweat between us, my body folded into yours.

Before I even open my eyes.

In the pit of your stomach,

the acoustics are rather terrible.

So all the secrets and worries sound a lot worse, vibrate with all the wrong tones, make you shiver as though you’re watching your favorite musician make a fool of himself/herself on the stage.

My one secret paces back and forth and I can hear its footfalls stretching upwards through my diaphragm, swelling painfully across my ribs before gurgling into the base of my throat. I cough. I think of him.

I wonder if, when I choose to let myself whisper, when I choose to bite down on my lip and let the acoustics be what they are, he’ll be able to hear what I need him to listen to. I wonder if he’ll place a hand on my stomach and feel how loudly the pit has been pounding; I wonder if he’ll know how much I wanted to tell him. I wonder if he’ll know that acoustics aren’t everything, and that I have beautiful songs to sing anyway.