another love

sandy li

Another love is the realization that someone has entered my days so thoroughly that I begin adjusting my language and movement without noticing when the shift happened, and by the time I do, it’s already too late to pretend neutrality.

Another love is the way I've started buying blood oranges though I hate the tartness. Started splitting them open over the sink to watch the red juice run between my wounded fingers, nibbling at my scars because they mentioned once how their grandmother grew them in Seville, and the smell makes them quiet in a way I've learned means memory is happening somewhere I can't follow. Now my hands are stained pink every Sunday and I'm complicit in my own haunting, staging these small shrines to someone else's nostalgia like I'm trying to build a door from my kitchen into their childhood and walk through it.

There's a tint of displacement when I find I've traced their beautiful, beautiful name in the condensation on the bathroom mirror, blacked out from last night's bad decisions. My handwriting is strange and possessed-looking in the reflection of the overhead light, and having to watch it evaporate letter by letter while I brush my teeth. This feels like practicing for something I'm not ready to practice for, yet then I’m doing it again the next morning, and the next, my fingers moving through water vapor, drawing thin string between the droplets once again and again.

It's the way I've memorized the specific mechanics of how they take off their jacket, that particular shrug where the right shoulder dips first and their head tilts left to free the collar, a gesture so ordinary it shouldn't have syntax, shouldn't be something I can conjugate in my mind at stoplights, but I've watched it enough times that I can see it frame by frame in the dark, can feel my own shoulders mimicking the movement when I'm alone like my body is trying to figure out how their bones grow.

It's finding I can't walk past the paint store anymore without stopping to look at the color samples in the window, specifically the greens, because they said once they've always wanted to paint a room the color of lichen, not moss, lichen. That specific grey-green that looks like time has settled on a rock face. I'm standing on the sidewalk in the rain pressing my fingers to the glass over "Aged Pewter" and "Eucalyptus Shadow" and "Storm Light" like I'm trying to find the exact shade of their longing, as if I could bring them a paint chip and say here, I found the color you were searching for, and they would understand this means I want to help them paint rooms I haven't been invited into, in futures I am not yet part of.

It's the visceral jolt when someone on the subway has the same cadence of breathing, that specific rhythm of inhale and exhale I've apparently memorized from sitting next to them on my couch, close enough to feel their ribs expand and contract like I'm learning to read braille with my shoulder blade. For three stops I'm convinced it's them behind me, before I turn and see a stranger. The disappointment is so sharp and physical I have to get off two stations early and walk the rest of the way just to let my heartbeat recalibrate to reality and convince my stupid animal brain that it can't summon them just by wanting hard enough.

I wish I could find another, love.