I Must Belong Somewhere Page 2

  23

  She’s traveled so much the past year,

  but she’s barely heard the words:

  “Should the cabin lose pressure,

  oxygen masks will drop from the overhead area.

  Please place the mask over your mouth and nose

  before assisting others.”

  He had been so willing to die,

  and she had been so willing to save him.

  24

  I must find a way

  to still choose myself despite

  holding on to you.

  25

  When I was young, I learned about a man named Ettore Majorana, who chose to disappear. He was young and very smart, but one day, he bought a ticket to Naples, got on the boat, and never returned. He left a note to his friends to apologize for his absence, then sent a telegram to cancel all of his commitments.

  There were several hypotheses regarding his disappearance, including suicide, but I always believed that he was alive. I chose to believe that he was one of the few ones who managed to vanish, chose to build his life the way he

  wanted it.

  I never forgot about Ettore. I had him in the back of my mind, pictured him living his best life, far different from the one he left behind.

  Recently, I decided to type his name in the search box and learned that his case of disappearance had been closed. Someone witnessed him in Buenos Aires, doing god knows what, but I smiled at that.

  As I sit here with my glass of wine, I make a toast:

  to Ettore,

  who disappeared—

  but also

  to the man he chose to be

  and the life he must have fully lived.

  26

  Some things you love

  won’t always serve their purpose.

  You have to let go.

  27

  I didn’t want to

  just survive this life.

  I wanted to live.

  28

  I sat on Fed Square

  as the sun set slow.

  There were pigeons

  trying to fight for a crumb

  and a family of four.

  I dared to ask,

  “Can I actually live like this?”

  And I meant: transient.

  You sat next to me

  and said, “Sure.

  As long as you always

  have a place to dock.”

  I’ve been away since;

  I’m still wondering where that was.

  29

  On the train ride to the city, there was a boy who was making kissing sounds with his girl. Every sentence would end with a kiss. As an unwilling spectator, I started to wince, but the truth is—

  I remembered when your sentences all ended with your lips, hitting the sides of my cheeks, my temples, my skin. I sat there not knowing what to do with my hands, my chest, my lungs, my fingertips.

  I didn’t know what to do with you, soaking my skin with your wet kisses and your love—

  my love.

  I didn’t know what to do with your love.

  I didn’t know how to kiss you back, didn’t know how to love you just as much when the truth is I do.

  I do.

  I just didn’t know how to show you. I had to learn from years and years of replacement lovers, storybooks, and novels. Now I think I know.

  Yet there is no you left to show.

  30

  She wanted to be alone,

  but with someone.

  That should make sense.

  31

  You stopped intruding on my dreams.

  In fact, I am convinced:

  you now live in my subconscious,

  you little

  castaway.

  You start fires and let them

  burn through the night.

  You take from my land,

  let your feet sink through

  the mud.

  You run mad,

  leaving foot trails in the sand.

  You throw spears,

  climb trees.

  You seek for sustenance,

  you hungry

  little thing.

  You ignore my call

  to make no sound.

  You spell out capital

  H - E - L - P

  with seashells

  and granite.

  You captive,

  you captivate me

  still.

  You show up every once in a while

  to remind me of the promises

  I broke,

  the lives I could have hoped

  to live, to make sure

  I don’t forget.

  I’ve got you trapped

  on a little island

  for myself.

  I am your shipwreck,

  thunder and lightning.

  I brought you here to abandon,

  so you hunt me down

  and haunt me for it.

  32

  The roaring twenties:

  learning how to be alone,

  wondering, How long?

  33

  You’re a little too ashamed to admit that it’s getting a little lonely.

  Not all the time.

  But some days, you feel the loneliness sneak up on you,

  grazing your arms like a phantom limb,

  pulling you in for a quick embrace

  only to leave

  as soon as your mind starts to wonder,

  as soon as your heart whispers:

  How long has it been?

  34

  I don’t want

  to be loved

  in sample sizes anymore.

  I wanna be ravished

  whole.

  35

  Go ask the question:

  how do you want to be loved?

  Use it as a map.

  — What’s your love language?

  36

  I am always looking for places to go;

  you liked staying in places,

  setting down roots and so.

  I grew wings,

  but sometime in between,

  I think I left my heart

  where you’ve been.

  I know where to return.

  You’re still there,

  feet planted in the soil,

  aren’t you?

  37

  I loved the idea of you,

  conjured from the pieces,

  memories you left.

  I made you human

  in my head.

  Living and breathing,

  in my head.

  Safe and stable,

  in my head.

  Loving me always,

  in my head.

  I loved the idea of you;

  it was so convenient.

  I made you as real

  as I needed,

  used you as a shield

  from the rest.

  The person I blamed

  for failing to do

  what I needed.

  38

  At ten, she staged a little coup.

  She put up barricades

  and staged being sick on

  Friday afternoons.

  She skipped school.

  She didn’t like how the girls started to change.

  They stopped playing,

  picked up combs,

  stared at pocket mirrors,

  and whispered about boys.

  She didn’t like how the boys
kept bugging her.

  They started sending her plastic roses,

  passed her balled-up pieces of paper

  containing meaningless words.

  They never meant what they wrote.

  She also didn’t like to sweat

  and how the sun hit her back

  from where she sat in the afternoons.

  She hated how she smelled.

  It didn’t belong to her.

  She hated the hair growing in her armpits

  and soon enough down there, too.

  Her chest itched, and she’d been growing

  here and there—

  she hated it so much

  that she staged a little coup.

  Who cared about percentages

  if she was wholly changing?

  Her grades fell way back to the line of seven.

  She still liked reading—

  volunteered to recite stories—

  but nobody would listen.

  Her mother handed her a bra

  and a deodorant stick.

  She cut her hair right by her chin.

  Over the holidays, she turned a year older.

  She returned to school,

  approached the circle:

  girls with their detangling combs,

  foldable mirrors,

  floral handkerchiefs.

  She came and told the story

  of how she bled

  the very first time.

  She didn’t like it, but somehow,

  she thought,

  I belong now.

  39

  She grew up in front of the TV

  waiting for people to come home.

  She made friends with fiction,

  convinced herself that she had to be

  one of them:

  tall, white, blond, and blue eyed.

  Everything she wasn’t born to be:

  petite, brown, black haired, and dark eyed

  but—

  She saw Cameron Diaz get married in this movie.

  It happened hours before she had

  a screaming match with this lady,

  just two women fighting for

  the same man.

  The blond girl got the guy.

  Didn’t matter if there was

  someone else who knew him better.

  Didn’t matter if there was

  someone else who loved him longer.

  The blond girl got the guy

  because she was young,

  and cute, and rich.

  The girl who won was the crème brûlée,

  and she was the Jell-O—

  no, she was sticky rice

  wrapped in banana leaves.

  She had no idea what

  Jell-O even was.

  40

  She dove into the classics,

  found Ali MacGraw by the doorstep,

  crying all alone.

  She and Ryan O’Neal had been fighting,

  so when he finally saw her,

  he said, “Sorry.”

  And then the actress said the phrase that she had to repeat over the years, hoping she could finally understand what it meant.

  Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

  More than a decade had passed, and she still let that play around her mouth,

  like a tongue twister.

  A riddle.

  She still didn’t get it.

  “Sorry” is a nice word.

  “Sorry” means feelings were considered.

  “Sorry” means “I learned.”

  And love?

  Love means having the courage to say you’re sorry.

  41

  She’s learning the word

  “sorry.”

  She’s always known it

  but doesn’t say it enough.

  She would rather see people

  walk out than say,

  “I’m sorry;

  I didn’t mean that.”

  Because some days, she does.

  She really means it to hurt.

  She hurts before she gets hurt,

  makes a habit of

  swallowing a five-letter word.

  She’s been learning the word

  “sorry.”

  She’s always known it,

  but she’s been meaning it now.

  42

  All of her shoes were in the shade of brown.

  She noticed this as she stared at her new shoes,

  the ones he bought for her after they’d had lunch.

  Lunch, his equivalent of cramming in

  minutes, hours, days, weeks, months,

  years of her life.

  She forgot how frequently he’d come.

  Such an effort to travel for two hours

  to see her for small talk.

  She forgot what they talked about,

  but she remembered telling him,

  “All of my shoes are in the shade of brown.”

  He told her that he was the same.

  It was the only common thing they had,

  apart from the DNA.

  She was always looking for that,

  for something to be shared,

  apart from the nose she supposedly

  inherited.

  They had these one-hour Sundays,

  but she still never knew him like that.

  They never moved from the small talk;

  she doubted he knew her that much.

  He always missed her birthdays.

  He got confused with the dates.

  She didn’t remind him.

  Every year, she played the game of

  “would he finally remember?”

  It was funny at first,

  an inside joke.

  But as the years piled on,

  she just started to roll her eyes

  at the late text,

  the generic greeting.

  Meanwhile, her grandfather had nine kids,

  and when she was cleaning out his things,

  she saw a piece of paper with his scribbles:

  all the names of his kids,

  the dates of their birth—

  she assumed so he would never

  mix them up,

  no matter how plenty

  or how old they were.

  God bless my grandfather—

  she took a photo of his scribbles

  and posted it online.

  He did it right.

  Through the years, she’d said,

  “Doesn’t matter, he tried.”

  But she is so

  tired.

  Sometimes she just needed it to be done right.

  43

  The first time she held a boy’s hand,

  it became hot news.

  She became an overnight sensation,

  and if they had tabloids in school,

  she’d be on the front page for sure.

  The headlines would read,

  “WHO IS SHE?”

  They’d have her worst picture,

  zoom her in like a criminal.

  They knew exactly who she was.

  She had always been around,

  doing her own thing,

  never really in the way of

  couples; it wasn’t her thing.

  She didn’t do relationships at

  fifteen.

  She had a dream:

  she just wanted to sing.

  They paired her up with a boy.

  Everyone liked him
,

  but she didn’t know just how much

  until she decided

  maybe

  she could be his.

  He didn’t seem to disagree.

  There were ten fingers,

  two hands,

  two arms linked,

  and it was done

  with an understanding,

  “You and me,

  we’re a thing.”

  But then they weren’t.

  For he was everybody’s,

  and she was a nobody.

  Until she became their target.

  She wasn’t ready for it.

  She became the fool

  who stormed through

  the deluge.

  He said he tried to protect her,

  yet she was the only one

  walking around with archers

  aiming at her every move.

  He said he still wanted her,

  said it over and over

  through the years,

  but she refused.

  He could spend all of his years

  trying to prove it,

  but she was not done

  punishing him for what he did—

  or didn’t do.

  He let go of her hand.

  He watched her drown.

  He didn’t love her

  the way she needed

  to be loved.

  44

  She changed her name after they’d slandered it,

  baptized herself with a word that alluded to light,

  and what a name she chose,

  because where she came from,

  it was dark.

  It was whispers in the corridor,

  raised eyebrows,

  laughter echoing on the marbled floors,

  private messages asking,

  “Is it true, what they are saying about you?”

  But what is the truth?

  Since changing her name, she’s buried the memories of the girl who went through the firing squad, the same one who took the bullets to her back as she kept quiet about the attacks.

  Her new self got a new face to match. She’s now all red lipstick and charcoal eyeliner, no more baby powder, original Chapstick.

  She’s a woman now.

  The girl they talked about in harsh tones, she’s gone now. She got rid of the girl after the shooting. She took her body to the woods and gagged her mouth with a piece of cloth. Not that she would need it—the girl kept her mouth shut when she was still alive, afraid of what her voice would sound like.

  But she still put a finger over the girl’s lips and shushed her. Shhhhhh.