Be Straight with Me

by Emily Dalton

  because I also know

  that when we go back down that ladder,

  we’ll no longer be in our world,

  up here

  where it’s just you and me

  and nothing else matters.”

  Your words summon all of the history between us.

  Tears reflect in our eyes as we stare at one another,

  and I wish I could wrap my arms around you

  and press my face under your jaw,

  where I know it fits so perfectly.

  I hug you, and you hold me tight.

  “You know I feel the same way, Max.”

  Your shoulders bounce lightly as you weep.

  When we let go, you shake your arms out

  like you’re shaking off the emotions.

  Then you head for the ladder.

  I sit motionless for another moment

  before following you across the roof.

  Standing on the top rungs of the ladder,

  you turn around—

  not so much to face me

  as to begin your descent—

  but our eyes meet

  for one more aching moment.

  Then you drop your gaze

  and disappear.

  SUNFLOWERS

  When you return to New York in the fall,

  I’ve broken up

  with Kevin.

  Who was I kidding?

  It was never over between us.

  And now we’ve found our way back to each other.

  We take turns feeling spiteful

  and jealous or hopelessly in love.

  One night in the first week of December

  you come over with a bouquet of sunflowers,

  and the thick, scratchy stalks bristle in my hands

  as I stick them in a jar of water.

  Indelicate as they are,

  you’ve never given me flowers before.

  It’s a sweet, pleasant surprise,

  yet here we are, still—

  almost five years later—

  chasing after the ghost

  of an apocalyptic horse,

  trying to bring it back to life

  just so we can continue beating it to death.

  As I place the sunflowers on the windowsill,

  a few of the garish heads smile up at me

  in blameless delight.

  The rest hang heavy.

  AFTER NEW YEAR’S

  I sit in my bed in Gowanus

  with tears streaming down my cheeks,

  leaving dark splotches on my sweatshirt

  as I read the email you’ve sent me.

  After every “I love you,” there is a “but.”

  You don’t want it to be possible

  for a guy to make you as happy as I do.

  You never want to lose touch

  with me or not know about my life.

  And if we don’t end up together,

  you are always going to imagine

  what your life would have been like with me.

  And you know it would be amazing,

  and you know I would make you happy.

  After reading your note,

  a hundred clichés about broken hearts hang

  from my neck like sandbags.

  I call in sick to work.

  I go in to work stoned.

  I have no motivation

  to wake up in the morning,

  get dressed, eat food.

  You have a permanent hold on my heart . . .

  like a giant red metronome ticking off the beat.

  In a fit of tears, I grab the wilting sunflowers

  from their jar and throw them out the window

  into the dumpster on the sidewalk.

  The next morning, I perch on the sill to smoke

  and glance down to find, on the fire escape below mine,

  the sunflowers I tossed the night before

  slumped over the edge, just out of reach.

  All through the winter, I watch

  as the rotting blooms

  shrivel and freeze.

  ON A BENCH ON THE WEST SIDE

  There’s a big, dumb inflatable dolphin

  bobbing over the pink baby waves

  of the Hudson. I keep staring at it

  while you protest my idea

  to cut all communication for a while.

  It’s hard to focus on a single thought,

  so instead my mind starts playing out

  my hypothetical escape:

  I jump into the water,

  mount the dolphin,

  and sail off majestically

  toward the horizon . . .

  As the sun goes down in front of us,

  the sky constantly evolving

  and changing colors in this

  picture-perfect breakup ambiance,

  you agree to give me space,

  just the six weeks I’ve asked for.

  We hug goodbye, and now

  I’m lingering here for hours.

  It’s so beautiful—

  the changing sky

  and its filmlike reflection in the water—

  that I can’t turn away.

  So I stay even after

  all has gone dark

  and the watery pictures have stilled

  and vanished.

  I stay because

  I need to be sure

  it isn’t going to get pretty again.

  REACHING

  I’ve waited until late April

  to finally contact you.

  I call you, but your phone

  goes to voicemail.

  So I wait another few days and try again.

  Still, no response.

  I try to reassure myself that

  no matter what is going on,

  I can handle it, but

  I can’t shake the feeling

  that something terrible has happened

  during our break from each other.

  Finally, you text me to say you’re sorry

  for missing my calls and that

  you’re fine, just busy.

  Your response seems oddly formal and robotic . . .

  I can’t restrain myself. Instead of texting back,

  I call.

  After a few rings,

  you answer, and

  your voice sounds generic,

  like it could be any male voice

  in the world.

  “Hi.”

  I try not to sound indignant.

  “Is everything okay with you?

  Oh . . . I mean, if you’re busy right now,

  that’s fine; I just—

  Yeah, I’m all right . . .

  I’m sorry, but why does this feel

  so weird right now, Max?”

  “I’m not sure if you already knew this

  or not,

  but

  I’m kind of dating someone.”

  And just like that,

  we

  aren’t

  “we”

  anymore.

  And you

  are just

  another “him.”

  REFLECTIONS: CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE

  I couldn’t have been any older

  than five or six:

  It’s my dad and me,

  and we’re standing outside

  some sort of military base

  in the middle of the desert.

  And there’s warfare going on all around us,

  bombs dropping and guns and fighting.


  I look up to my dad,

  and he’s dressed in an army uniform . . .

  and I’m pulling on his arm,

  trying to get him to look down at me.

  I’m saying, “Dad! Dad, come on!

  We have to get out of here!”

  He looks down at me,

  but he doesn’t know who I am.

  He doesn’t know I’m his daughter,

  and he brushes me away.

  Eventually,

  I realize that

  it’s time to wake up.

  MAX’S NEW BOYFRIEND

  “I love your hair! Is that natural?”

  Up until now, I’ve only ever seen

  a few photos of Shane on social media,

  and in all of them he has a big,

  eye-crinkling grin on his face.

  Standing in front of me

  in the kitchen of Sophie and Ramona’s apartment,

  complimenting my curls,

  Shane is a real human, lifelike and animated,

  and I’m oddly thrown off

  by how similar he and Max look,

  almost like they could be brothers.

  Same height, same soft, round features,

  same short hairstyle and scruff.

  The only major differences are hair and eye color;

  Shane’s dark brown hair and eyes contrast

  next to Max’s blond and blue.

  Max mixes drinks for himself and Shane

  as the three of us stand near the fridge

  talking about my hair.

  “I hated it all through high school and college.

  It was always just this big nest of knots.

  I had no idea how to handle it,

  so I’d just straighten it every day.”

  My brain goes into some kind of autopilot survival mode.

  I avoid eye contact with Max.

  “Anyway, it was pretty exhausting,” I continue,

  “trying to make it straight all those years.

  Some things you just can’t force straight,

  am I right?”

  I excuse myself abruptly and hurry away,

  flinging myself into the bathroom.

  Staring into the mirror over the sink,

  I smile at my reflection,

  then burst into a drunken fit of giggles,

  and it feels oddly thrilling

  to have a moment like this

  alone with myself.

  I down the rest of my whiskey ginger

  and then rejoin the party,

  steering clear of Max and Shane.

  As the night goes on and everyone gets drunker,

  I inevitably bump into the two of them again

  on the fire escape.

  With more liquor in our systems,

  we talk cheerfully and laugh,

  and as I get to know Shane better,

  I slowly begin to grapple

  with a disconcerting truth—

  I like him.

  I can see how he’s a suitable match for Max.

  They have the same taste in music,

  they dress similarly, they seem

  to have a calm, drama-free way

  of communicating with each other,

  and Shane also dated girls in high school

  and didn’t fully come out until college.

  “He also likes to write, just like you, Em!” Max says.

  “He’s written and directed a few plays.

  I’ve read them; they’re really good.

  You would like them.”

  REFLECTIONS: FIFTH BOYFRIEND

  Berlin.

  The beginning of November.

  Semester abroad.

  I lean against the railing

  of Max’s balcony

  with my eyes closed,

  letting the late-morning sun caress me

  instead of cuddling in close to him.

  He kisses my jaw and

  wraps his arm around me.

  “Your poor fingers,” he says.

  Max knows all about my terrible habit

  of picking at the skin around my cuticles.

  I like to peel it back slowly

  and then watch

  as a thin strip of fresh blood

  oozes

  from the raw underlayer of skin.

  Those close to me can gauge my stress level

  by the number of bandages I have

  wrapped around the tips of my fingers.

  Max coos into my ear as he kisses each finger

  and then holds my hand, and I can feel butterflies

  shaking out their dampened wings inside my stomach.

  He’s so good at holding me accountable,

  knocking my hands apart,

  begging me to stop mutilating my skin.

  As the sunlight dims behind a low-hanging cloud,

  he brings my face close to his and asks,

  “Dear fräulein, why do you do this to yourself?”

  as if he doesn’t already know.

  POETRY IN MOTION

  It’s well past midnight when I leave the party

  at Sophie and Ramona’s—

  leave Max and Shane—

  and step onto an empty subway car

  at the 2nd Avenue F station.

  No one gets on at Delancey/Essex.

  No one at East Broadway.

  I’m drunk and alone when one of those

  “Poetry in Motion” placards catches my eye

  in the corner of the car—

  “A Strange Beautiful Woman”

  by Marilyn Nelson

  —eight short lines

  about meeting a strange

  beautiful woman

  in the mirror.

  Hey,

  the speaker and her reflection

  both ask,

  What you doing here?

  I stand in front of the placard,

  reading the poem

  over and over again

  until I enter a sort of trance.

  The music in my headphones is on shuffle,

  and that song “Dance Yrself Clean” by LCD Soundsystem

  comes on. Slowly, I close my eyes

  and let the beat move me.

  DECISIONS

  In the morning, slices of white sunlight

  sneak between the blinds,

  and outside, someone lays on their horn,

  producing a sound like the dramatic fermata

  at the end of a song.

  I know that last night

  I unearthed a fear I’d

  buried deep

  five years ago

  in a stairwell in Milliken:

  my fear of falling in love

  and losing it all.

  And now,

  having fallen and lost,

  I have to decide what to do—who to be—

  in response.

  Max and I will never be

  Max and Emily

  again.

  But can Emily be Emily again?

  The honking quiets.

  I stare

  at the cross sections of light

  glowing in the far corner

  of the ceiling and begin

  to coax myself

  up.

  ACCOUNTABILITY

  I quit my job and leave the city.

  I go back to rural northern Connecticut

  where I grew up,

  where the night sky is impossibly dark

  and the roads are so empty and silent.

  I�
��ve stopped smoking, so the nights

  in particular have become

  long-lost sober reminders

  of an entirely separate existence.

  I miss the comforting glow and buzz of the city,

  but I’m coming to appreciate the bright stars

  I had forgotten existed,

  and the distant hoot of an owl

  interrupting the soft hum of crickets,

  and the sound of the trees inhaling

  and exhaling a sudden gust of wind.

  I’m learning how to chop firewood with my dad;

  I go on long walks through the woods with my mom;

  I smash rocks apart on the driveway with my niece and nephew.

  My dreams are shockingly elaborate and vivid,

  like the constellations I’m rediscovering.

  Sometimes, I dream about Max,

  and other times, I dream about drugs.

  But for the most part, I keep having this dream

  about rising high in the air above everything

  and floating over it all to where I need to go.

  In these dreams, it takes concerted focus

  for me to rise up.

  The moment I lose concentration,

  gravity pulls my body closer and closer to the ground.

  I’m like Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins,

  or Charlie and Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,

  or Wendy and the kids in Peter Pan.

  Only, instead of laughter or burps or fairy dust,

  I seem to be relying on

  my own resolve.

  FORGING

  A family friend—a blacksmith—

  needs help in his shop,

  and I need a job,

  so every morning for the next few months,

  I don heavy Carhartts and steel-toed boots

  and drive to town.

  I learn how to weld metals together

  and heat iron in the forge;

  how to work the massive power hammers

  and the drill press and the loud, groaning band saw;

  how to spark, light, and adjust the butane valve on the blowtorch;

  how to grind and sharpen the blade on a knife;

  and how to read the color and the grain of the metal

  for thickness and density and strength.

  And in the evenings, I write.

  It’s not cold enough yet for a fire,

  but I build one in the living room fireplace anyway.

  The sound and movement of the flames,

  like tiny, pale flags whipping in an invisible wind,

  make me feel less alone with my words.

  My fingers swollen from work,

  I type at my desk

  with little aim

  but to make something

  anything