Vanessa Wise

i am never not talking to myself

[le-lapin-blanc]

Dear reader, there is more than one “he”. I’m estimating around six. I’m not crazy like that. It’s not all the same idiot all these years. They come and they go. I just chose not to identify by initial, heaven forbid by name, just to keep them as similar as they are.

[le-lapin-blanc]

Not planning an end this year, I let love envelop me and float in his arms even after he tells me how I worry him. I’m nothing if not a mess in his eyes but he showered me as I screamed from cold water and bruises formed from hitting the tiles. I can’t remember if he combed my hair but the lake crested its waves as my voice eventually turned level and even. He says I worry him as I become placid and easy to be hurt. He’ll never know I’ve never said no to anyone even if it meant walking around the next day raw and a touch exposed. He says he could tell if someone else had their way with me before and I slap his arm and laugh, ignoring the hate this sentence can carry, ignoring the implications and the potential harm this can cause in month’s time.

[le-lapin-blanc]

Diagonal and placid I fell into waves

He laid undisturbed soundly

Mentioning not how I had behaved

Breathing the rhythm of the wind

As I crept closer towards inevitable sleep

His hands inched my burning skin

And whatever he’s made of creeped right through me

In that sliver of feel between reality and a dream

He shouldn’t be mad at you for sleeping diagonal,

The other said under new sun

As I readjusted my gaze, a review

Of a sentence said bypassing thought

I predicted what was done was done

But the floorboards creaked with my unsettled voice

Hating to be seen under a bright lamp

Hating to say no

Pretending I have no choice

Letting his curious insight into my flaws come to show

Accepting that he believes I’m a mess

Given not from how I left the room

Scattered and in progress

But as if I’m nothing but a fume

[le-lapin-blanc]

Stroking my hair and reciting my poem from last year I had long memorized, I sank into his depths, vertiginous and curled like a cat. He digs at my threshold and this time around I let him because of the truth ringing from his confessions of love, unapologetically.

I woke at first light seeping through the curtains and my first thought was did he leave in that floaty falling out of dream phase where fantasy and reality lie too close together. I remembered suddenly walking him out near two in the morning before climbing back into that warm bed and noting he left his hoodie behind. I had thought about opening the door and calling after him, but lethargy had long washed over my mind. I saw his texts of angel numbers on my phone and another wave of sleep embedded me.

[saintweaver]

Kenneth Koch, To Marina

[le-lapin-blanc]

My beloved, he come back to me

[le-lapin-blanc]

He said he went and found all the pictures I’ve secretly posted in the past year. I asked if he somehow stumbled upon that blog, but he admitted he purposefully searched for it. Late spring, when he was already buried alive by seemingly bigger experiences, he had scoured for me still.

Head heavy and words slurred, I showed him poems I wrote while I was ravaged and forlorn, unbeknownst to him having had worse moments than whatever he had put me through last summer. I tried to memorize his face as he read it once, twice, three time, but for the life of me I can’t recall his worded reaction. If I was braver, or stupider, I’d tell him more and show it all.

[le-lapin-blanc]

As I lay with the room spinning and the air from the window not quite reaching my face, time felt endless, stretched and infinite. He was here, somewhere too. I forgot who turned off the lights but I could feel the weight of him on the mattress. I think the mattress was on the floor. I reached an arm across his body and he immediately responded. I’m not sure if there was ever an after.

[le-lapin-blanc]

His hands smooth my hair that he remembers last was red as the sunset of a prior summer, 85 degrees even in the shade of a burning intensity that was our closeness. The seasons passed and I never knew him in the winter, nor the spring, as I ached for a benign reminder of him. I wondered who he was all those miles away. I wondered if he wondered about me. But habits die harder than stars and his fingers wrap around my neck just how I like it as he tells me he loves me, he loves me so much he had to come back. I look enamored into his eyes that I’ve already memorized and ached for, and he holds my stare like he always did, always does, and a softness takes over the air, his face, my body.

[le-lapin-blanc]

He knows my bones and brains

As memories stay glued

Remembrance remains

He holds me and I’m subdued

To a greater force,

Familiar hands tracing skin

He was sick with my fever all year; remorse

And I sink into his lap, the sun, when I begin

To trust his love

To pave a path

Whatever he’s made of

Whatever’s his wrath

I swallow it whole

Let his arms take hold

Of what’s his to control

Let feel consoled

Because will there ever be

Another him?

[le-lapin-blanc]

September 2025

I knew myself as the possessive one but when he said don’t leave me I questioned how in love I really am.

June 2026

Now he’s the one leaving first and I cried hot tears into his white shirt as he began to broach the subject.

Put into the perspective of the one who’ll firstly inflict the damage, the other clings on for the last remnants.

We found our way back to each other only to leave again, so soon.

But that’s not how our story ends.

[le-lapin-blanc]

I’ve never been so loved. The sunset colors his car orange and he tells me I look beautiful in the light as he strokes my hair. He motions me over to the driver’s side onto his lap. We’ve been here before.

He loves me so much I plagued his mind the entire year. I was the fever he caught last summer. He tells me this and more as I watch in awe because I’ve never known such longing.

I’m in love because I never fell out of it. I told him how he was reduced to a folder on my laptop stuffed with all the writings I made of him over the year and how no one ever came close enough to him. And while I was writing, I couldn’t help but wonder how the flame hasn’t been extinguished yet. I was always looking for closure but perhaps I’ll never get it. Perhaps we aren’t meant to go seamlessly.

We’re in love and the sun shines on both sides.

[le-lapin-blanc]

July was cold breezes and long nights, newfound love and car rides. I carried the month like a time bomb, knowing weather will turn to late summer and the heat will displace me. He held on to everything before August, because he knew I’d migrate when the leaves turn red as my hair, the hair he’d tuck behind my ears and find scattered on his pillow long after I’ve left.

[le-lapin-blanc]

He remembered. He remembers everything.

I’d find your hairs in my bed for the longest time, he said after expressing how anguishing it was when I left my scent flowery in his room.

Do you remember that poem I wrote? I slyly asked, keeping a benefit of the doubt.

You wrote a lot of poems.

Yes, I snickered. But remember, July was cold breezes and—

Yes. He met my eyes. Of course I remember.

[le-lapin-blanc]

Before my own eyes I’m watching bravery envelop me; shifting from bashful, I relax into the mattress when he says he wants to see me, all of me. He says I’m beautiful, oh so beautiful, in my purest form, soft belly vulnerable and he meets my eyes. Even if we end up apart, right now, he worships me. That should be enough. I’m lucky to have this, to be so loved.

[le-lapin-blanc]

My beloved, he come back to me.

[le-lapin-blanc]

Pros and cons of contacting him

Pros:

- reunite

- peace of mind (maybe)

- I’ll get to see him and he’ll get to see me

Cons:

- heart palpitations

- doesn’t reply or rejects me

- makes everything more complicated (I frankly don’t care)

- portrays me as running back to him (do I care what others think of me or would this be something I think of myself?)

- weak?

- I’ll have to get over it all over again

[le-lapin-blanc]

I’m not sure what’s next. I’m not fitting into the same places anymore so seamlessly,

[le-lapin-blanc]

I want you to know oh so badly.

All this warm season does is remind me of you and I can’t run from what’s inside my head.

[le-lapin-blanc]

He said I’d be damaged goods. Was it inevitable then?

No. He doesn’t know me anymore.