strays and other disgusting things
“is it wrong if i just want to be loved?” i ask my mother while she folds freshly dried laundry, while the pressure cooker screams in the background, and really, it is an inconvenient time, so she does not even look up before saying don’t start thinking like those girls, those loose girls, those wandering girls with lipstick bitten off at midnight and no self respect, and i want to ask her what exactly is so catastrophic about love, but she is already telling me that good women survive on less, good women swallow oceans and call it discipline, good women are loved quietly if at all, like government buildings or dying gods, and i stare at the turmeric staining her fingernails and at her bangles clinking like handcuffs every time she points at me, because somewhere between “be careful” and “be good” she built a cage so ornate it could pass for love in dim lighting, because she says dignity as though it is a meal that can keep a body warm at night, and still, absurdly, childishly, i want someone to touch my forehead like checking for fever and say there you are, there you are, i was wondering where you had gone.
“is it wrong if i just want to be loved?” i ask my friends over cheap drinks and fries going cold in paper trays, and they groan affectionately, theatrically, as though i am a recurring problem in a sitcom none of us can stop watching, babe you need higher standards, babe you keep romanticizing people with the emotional depth of a parking ticket machine, babe you would let a man ruin your life just because he knows one sad song you happen to know, and i tell them yes, probably, maybe i would, because sometimes i think i was born with my heart held incorrectly in my body, tilted too far outward, ridiculous as a stray dog wagging its tail after being kicked, and we laugh so hard at this overused metaphor that somebody snorts cola through their nose, and so one of them says babe you need hobbies while another says get bangs instead and another is posting a blurry story with cigarette smoke and some man’s hand visible for exactly half a second because god forbid we admit we are all begging at the same altar, and we sit in cafés pretending to be evolved while dissecting text messages like dead animals in biology lab, and they tell me love is embarrassing, dependence is ugly, but later one of them gets sad enough to confess she keeps replaying a blurry memory of a boy who no longer remembers her birthday, and suddenly we are all very quiet, so they go home to their respective glowing phones and i walk back alone under streetlights that make everyone look briefly holy, briefly salvageable, briefly like the kind of person someone would stay for.
“is it wrong if i just want to be loved?” i ask my ex lover, and he laughs the tired laugh of a man discovering that women do not become easier to hold simply because you have already undressed them, says god, you’re exhausting sometimes, you’re always sad about something, always needing reassurance, always pulling me close just to be the magician's assistant for three days afterward, says i was clingy and distant at once which feels almost impressive when phrased like a personality defect instead of a wound, says i could be cruel in those sharp little ways that leave no visible bruise, and i want to argue, but instead i remember how unbearable it is to explain your own damage to somebody already inconvenienced by it, how humiliating to sit there trying to translate grief into acceptable terms, no listen, i only disappear because i become convinced you secretly hate me, no listen, the cruelty is defensive, preemptive, like setting fire to your own house before eviction can arrive, no listen, every time i asked if you still loved me i was really asking whether i was finally becoming too difficult to keep, and he sighs in that flat exhausted way people do around clingy stray animals, says everything with me feels catastrophic, and maybe he’s right because somewhere along the line i began loving him like an unruly child gripping a coat sleeve in a crowded supermarket—hard enough to wrinkle it, hard enough to embarrass us both—and the worst part, the truly ridiculous part, is that even while he is cataloguing all the ways i made loving me difficult, some grotesque hopeful part of me is still thinking yes, but you stayed for a while, didn’t you? yes, but you said you loved me... did you?
“is it wrong if i just want to be loved?” i ask myself in the mirror where i stand naked and overdramatic under terrible bathroom lighting, inspecting my body like a dissatisfied landlord, and the mirror version of me looks exhausted, frankly, like she has survived too many almosts and too few miracles, and i think about every ridiculous thing i have done for affection: every softened opinion, every delayed reply crafted to seem accidental, every joke performed while my heart dragged itself bloodily across the floor behind me like a wedding train, and still there is this humiliating stubborn hope twitching inside me, this mothly instinct to crawl toward warmth no matter how many shoes have already come flying, and outside someone is setting off wedding fireworks for strangers while i stand here looking at my own reflection, only me and the mirror and this embarrassing endless ache sitting obediently at my feet like it still believes it is wanted.
