Phantoms

I fall in love with a phantom who smiles like my childhood best friend, who has his shining eyes and button nose and a tasteful way of mocking how obsessively I love him. Whoever he’s with or whatever task he’s doing, he does it with such intention – only one thing at a time, and that thing demands all his focus. Only one thing at a time unless he’s rolling a joint, which he does methodically and mechanically, as if he’s been doing it for so long that the action embodies him. He eats very slowly and smokes his Winstons in the garage and loves his family and his dog and his pet shrimp –who mostly take care of themselves, he’s explained, given that they eat the algae and detritus that floats to the tank’s surface. His explaining is something else I love about him, how he explains over and over, again and again, moments of his day, what his friends are up to, how his family is doing and who he’s seeing for a drink before dinner. Enjoying the act of explaining, somehow never exasperated by my constant curiosity. Perhaps he is plagued by little moments of irritation, I imagine, and he never says it – gets flustered, he never says it – gets overwhelmed, he never says it – just laughs and laughs until the internal heat of his emotions flushes his face, condensation blurring his sight. I fall in love with this visceral reaction, unveiled when he’s uncomfortable, when he’s comfortable, when he’s nervous, when he’s relaxed. As if he’s been doing it for so long that it embodies him, methodical and mechanical, turning life’s heaviest sensations into euphoria like sparkling lemon water to Moulin à Vent. He tells me that if he could dream, he would have only nightmares. I ask him what he did before the weed took them all, encasing his slumber in a peaceful kind of emptiness. He tells me he can’t remember. I assume he likes it better that way.

I fall in love with how he kisses me, gentle and soft, demanding all his focus. I fall in love with his incredible grin, squinting and fiery with a joy that’s almost childlike in its purity. I fall in love with his willingness to share without my asking, how he tells me every ingredient in the pasta dish he made for dinner and how restful his sleep was the next morning. I fall in love with the way he holds my hand while we walk, my arm linked through his, fingers interlaced, pressed to his chest or mine. The way his soft black hair slides between his shoulder blades in the shower, the way his lateral incisor has a tiny discoloration, the way he moves the utensils away from the edge of the table and lines them up like tiny soldiers. How he looks at me when he serenades me, inches from my face, our heads bobbing in rhythm. How we lose track of hours, lose sleep, lose all sense of reality when our lips touch. Tangled in the sheets, our lips touch. Having a cigarette on the bench in the courtyard, our lips touch. Walking in the botanical gardens, he explains the names of flowers and animals, we watch schoolchildren play games in the fields, our lips touch. Phantoms in a world that cannot see us, encased by a passion so powerful that we become invisible. We do things for each other – he reassures me that he’ll get home safe from a party, and I exercise my anxiety away so I won’t fog his ever-present sunshine with my gloomy disposition. We do things for each other – little pecks, rubbing noses, simultaneously and without thinking – things that remind us of a romantic compatibility so instinctual that we’re convinced it may have plagued us in past lives. His time becomes a precious commodity to me, one I treasure like I would diamond jewelry. And no matter how busy his life becomes, I fall in love with knowing he always has some glittering gift to give me.

I fall in love with his alacrity, how eagerly he yearns for my body. I fall in love with the tattoo on his neck; finding it, tickling it, making him shiver. With the hours he can spend immersed in every camber of my form. With the sensation in my stomach – deep, hollow, and rippling like a stone dropped in a well – as he traces my sides, lips touching, gentle and soft. I fall in love with all these things knowing that they hurt, knowing that they’re killing me, knowing their impermanence eats me alive.

I worry in flashes, as if shocked by lightening, if he’s driven drunk or if been in an accident or fallen out of love with me for some secret reason I’ll never ascertain. Unsure whether or not these are gut feelings I should trust or intrusive thoughts that he would joke about, teasing me so lovingly, rolling his eyes in exasperation. I worry in flashes that he’s bored with me, tired of me, if there’s nothing I could have done to keep his love when the distance between us limits our affections. I worry that I complain too much, I bother him with my troubles at all the wrong times, early in the morning when he’s high or drunk or with his friends – likely all three – his beloved golden hours are when my body and mind begin to fail me. I worry that passions so strongly stirred within him could be shut off as quickly as they were turned on, and that his sharply compelling qualities – his loyalty, his compassion, the sensitivity he allows so few people to see – will be clouded by the fog of memory. One day that will be the case, as we know very well that longevity is not a hallmark of what we have. He is so good at enjoying me while he has me. And try as I might to act the same way, in my loneliest hours, I find myself perpetually haunted.

I tell him often – perhaps too much – that his beautiful peculiarities should be reserved for a woman who can give him all the things he so greatly deserves. To have that secret wedding in Japan and raise fiery-eyed, joyful babies in his precious, modest home with wooden shutters and old tapestries. To provide what’s impossible for me to offer – a practical future, one that even the most powerful love affair can’t supersede. But I so often think that I’m not ready, that I need him just a little longer, that I could learn to survive on my own if I could see him roll a joint, if I could trace his broad shoulders half-asleep in bed, if I could taste the nicotine on his breath just one last time. I fall in love with a phantom who smiles like my childhood best friend. I fall in love with his tasteful way of mocking how obsessively I love him, who’ll take back his love before I’m ready to say goodbye. I miss him before he’s gone, thinking of the day he won’t be around anymore. Thinking of the day he won’t remember a thing about me and he won’t care. Thinking of the day our love will no longer bind us as phantoms, and we’ll both disappear.