Every summer means your hands in a cage.

by Caroline Grand-Clement

Once more I hear the music coming from your fingertips, & this time I decide not to shy away. I reach out, lightning-like, quick & afraid. Halfway to your door & wishing myself gone already. Scratch that: I shake my head & pull up my shoulders, pretend to be more than an unhinged door. The door swings open. You smile, blush, offer notes in an outstretched hand.  

“Truth: here is where we met the first time,” you say, which confuses me because I cannot recall ever knowing the sound of your open voice. You lead me in, past old guitar strings & dusty piano keys. I want to fall asleep to the air in your lungs & tell you so. You sit on the edge of your bed & take my hand, hold it against your throat. This is the first way I learn of softness: in the silent breaths you sing to my bones.

The room is anything you want it to be. Tonight it is a circle around everything you love. The walls are painted in the only shade of loss you know, meaning they are the color clouds adopt in the moments before the sun commits its own sacrifice. The curtains wrap around the window frames like broken wings. In the center of the room is an empty birdcage lined with feathers, & that is the second definition of softness. In another iteration of today, the cage is full of robins. 

I meet your parents on the way out & they smile in the way our gods would have if they had showed themselves before we decided to give up our faith. I understand then that they hope I am only a stop on your way to something more brutal. Of course, I want to take your hand again & take you away, right there & then. Of course, I say nothing, nod, & leave quietly. You stop me at the door, whisper a melody in my ear that sounds more dare than promise, so I take it between my fingers. I hold on to it, deep in the pocket of my jacket, on the whole way home. This is the third softness you gift me.

I only let it go when I arrive, & even then it is because I trip on the cobblestone & scrape my knee. The blood spills out like evidence of a crime I can’t exactly make out yet, a sin left unaccomplished. Scratch that: we are not calling this sin, when all of it shines so clearly of birth. 

As I walk up to my room my mouth fills with a sneeze & as I release it, opening the door, the force of the breath picks up a feather fallen upon my bed. It swirls around the ceiling, rising, rising, until it seems to dissipate into the air, then falls back lightly into my open palm. It is a robin feather, & though I know this means nothing, I think of it all week. 

It takes eight days before the universe brings us back together. You argue that that isn’t the case. You say, “Truth: the universe doesn’t care about us much. In fact, it doesn’t care about us at all”, which is not something I want to hear from the first person to make me believe in the void around us, but I let you say it, because you wink at me as you do, & because that wink is the only thing I do want to hear. 

You invite me to the beach on the last Sunday of summer & bring out the symphony. I become convinced you’re hiding something, in the way your hair doesn’t fall exactly like gravity would like it to. I pretend I haven’t been thinking of you all the time which is the stupidest & most honest lie I can muster. We put down our towels, tuck the edges against the wind, & walk out into the ocean.

“You know none of this is real, right?” you call out from between the waves in such a way that makes it unclear whether or not you believe your own words. I call back, “Of course I do!” even though I wish, so deeply & so shallowly, that I didn’t. It is never the unreal thing that ends up tearing one open, but the knowledge of the unreal thing itself. 

The ocean breaks upon us, all-knowing & powerful. We laugh & drown & fill our lungs with air every chance we miss. Your smile is terrible, which only makes me fall more. The sand gets everywhere, caresses our legs like the memory of an unremembered lover. As we stumble between each other’s limbs, catching our breaths, you exhale onto my neck & the wind of your body sends a shiver down mine. You grab me by the shoulders, & the sun dips below the horizon, too shy to see whatever happens next. The moon doesn't show; it is just us.

“Truth or dare?” you ask, which is the last game I want to play with you. You always make a coward & a liar out of me & those are the only words I can think of to explain the knots in my stomach. The fourth kind of softness we learn together: I choose dare & kiss you.

The last way softness arrives is in your voice as you tell me goodbye. It is finally fall & that sounds just right for this story. We leave the beach at dawn, when the shadows of the trees reach for the shore like so many longing fingers trying to hold on to the waves. The clouds fade away & disappear, nothing short of premonition. 

You do not say the word which is how I know you mean it. Instead, you say, “Truth: I get to love you in every universe that is not this one.” Perhaps this is why you thought our universe careless. Perhaps you knew about the unreal thing before you knew what made it unreal.

In every universe in which you love me, our bodies move in synchronicity. When you call, I am already at your door. When tears brim at your eyes, my hands have already cupped your cheeks. The kettle whistles as you wake & I pour the tea. We are perfect lovers in every single one of them, in each frozen frame. 

Frame by frame we watch the seconds go by & our skins age. Eventually, one of our hearts always gives out. In some universes, it is yours. In other, rarer universes, it is mine. In all but one, one of us is left & the other is right after that. In exactly one, our hearts give out in the same lack of breath & the whole world is rewound. 

In every universe you love me in, our bodies decay, & you stop loving me.

Dare: stay.

Dare: love me regardless.