Page 69 - Contrast2016

CONTRAST - 67

POLYAMORY

BY NADIA SOREZZA

forTNB&KDW

It is always difficult to fall in love with two people at once, when there is a
specter that accompanies you in every mirror.

When you are constantly fighting that battle of staying in love with the woman
you remember. The woman who cried curled up in your patio, the woman whose
hair looked like it was shook from those graph paper squares you sketched her
name in.

That woman rarely calls anymore; what is left of her never calls sober. The woman
you spend a semester listening to, sobbing over airways about distance and loss,
loss that you do not want to see coming.

When you finally see it, you are surprised by the source. You never thought
that you would break first. You see it in the eyes of the girl across the hall. You see
it when she hesitantly smiles at you, and her smile stays too long, creasing into
crow's feet that only add to her charm. You feel it when you collapse on the floor
of the shared space, exhausted by full days and the girl glides her fingertips down
your arms, searching for fingers to interlace with hers.

When you know that you can no longer stay when you see that vacancy in the
woman's eyes, when you journey back home for a strained conversation over mile-
high brioche french toast and over steeped Lipton. You suddenly weep, it doesn't
help the tea, and her hands become foreign as they sidle over your hipbones. The
familiar song of "stay with me" hits the wrong cadence, discordant notes and
grating tones instead of the lull of your conversations with the girl across the hall.
Those girlish conversations about social inequality sound more appealing than the
raspy woman's "I want your mouth on me."

When you know you can't quite leave either, after the breakfast breakup. You
still field calls, even though you should block her number, when you reply to every
text message as soon as you leave the girl's bed. You think of that woman in the
girl's bed, the hair of the girl hovering over you lengthens and straightens, and her
eyes deepen into a green that you have spent hours staring into, searching for
yourself reflecting back.

When you do anyway, when you slowly cut off your own heartstrings for the
preservation of the new wool being woven. The woman stops giving you news, and
one day, another former lover off-handedly mentions a baby and you shoot up,
crooked spine finally straight for once as you count months and pray for
paternity. You know it cannot be, but you plead regardless. Time passes and the
woman fades away. The girl becomes the new woman, the new women begins to
creep her way into your every thought and you realize there was a pocket for nev-
er anyone else in your honeycomb heart; you were always just searching for her.
They both lose their names. The consonants are replaced with round low vowels
that have always fit better on your foreign mouth, anyway. She banishes every
thought of the woman, and holds you close as the nightmares descend, of fathers
and lovers and children and your self.

When you no longer recognize her newly curved jaw line, cheekbones less prom-
inent under round full faces, baby fat enough to cradle the woman's hips as they