another me

this piece came from a workshop curated and led by BEE LB, who is fantastic. do all the things with them pls.

If there’s another me, she’s louder. When Alirio blushed and balked as the bottle slowed to a stop, she blew him a kiss across the circle and flipped him off before her spin. Now she wishes she’d had a one-night stand for the experience. She works in a lab and she bought her first house and she thinks about going into teaching to give back, which makes our mother swear in Malayalam during their weekly Facetimes. 

People say things like ‘Be grateful for the hard times because they make you who you are’ and ‘You’re only given what you can handle.’ The unsuffered then are all marshmallow flesh, sugar-scented air inside. Cotton candy hearts, a gut of caramel filling.

Walking with Blake across the bridge over the Raritan after midnight, he stops in the middle to tell me that his best friend drowned in high school. He is so close to me that his warmth makes the rest of me cold. 

‘If it meant you wouldn’t be a writer, would you erase your worst memory?’ 

I am supposed to say no and he is supposed to wait for me to turn my face into the moonlight before he kisses me on the bridge with the ghost of his friend rushing under our feet and my unknown trauma floating in the air like perfume, like pheromones. He is taller than me, his former lankiness swallowed by broad shoulders and new biceps. I have so many beautiful reasons to lie. 

The water is black and purple, dirty yellow where the current churns against the air pressing down on its surface. I’ll tell him yes. 

The water moves so slowly, so samely, it might not be moving at all. When I tip my face into the moonlight, he won’t be looking at me anymore. 

I love an alternate universe piece and they've been calling to me lately — Yesika Salgado posted a series on Instagram and I shared Jae Nichelle's Haiku with Alternate Endings with Write On folks earlier this week. What are you doing in an alternate universe right now?