I Am Water Page 3

  Makeshift Horoscope for Today

  Later that day I find a scrap piece of paper tucked inside my locker. Pisces: Today is not a day to be ruled by anger. Forgive those around you. (Especially cute Capricorns who don’t like being on your bad side.)

  A Proposal

  “You know what would really put you on my good side?” I whisper in the hallway into Ezra’s ear. He perks up. A wicked grin spreads across his face. “What?” I grab his hands and hold them lightly in mine. “Come down to the river with me.”

  April

  The scent of spring rain and damp earth fills the gorge. The leaves have returned, green and youthful. The water is crisp and eager to race, free of ice. We take the first drop head on. I peek at Ezra with sneaky, smiling eyes. The spray messes up his dark curls. He shivers and laughs nervously. Too nervously. I take in his wide eyes. The hands groping for a grip on the side of the boat. He’s afraid. I watch him closely for the rest of the trip, making sure not to knock his seat too hard on any rocks. The other guests climb out. Roaring with laughter. Wildly recapping every bend and brace. I ask what he thinks of the river. My river. I motion toward the light rippling across the water’s surface. The home the beaver built off the bank. The stillness pierced by the sharp cry of a hawk. “It’s okay,” he says. My mouth drops like a ledge rapid. “Just okay?” “It’s not really my thing. But thanks for taking me.” The river inside me stops gushing. A worry pops up: what if we’re not the same, not at all?

  A Concern

  I pick chocolate hazelnut, to Sam’s dismay. “Why do you have to ruin a perfectly good chocolate milkshake with nuts?” he grumbles. “Because it’s my turn and you can have it your way next week.” It took some time and convincing. But Sam has seemed to finally warm up to the idea of Ezra and me together. Which is funny, because we’ve been that way for half a year now. “He’s going to art school, Sam. Three hours away.” “Well, does that mean you’re not dating anymore?” “No, no,” I say. “We’ll just see less of each other. But he says he’ll visit every other weekend. And I can come stay with him when I want to.” “Okay,” Sam says. “So there’s nothing really to worry about then?” He looks up from the milkshake glass, straw still in mouth. A slight frown from the hazelnut. I look away and blow the end of my straw wrapper into his freckled face. “No. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Summer Montage

  I’m not sure exactly what happiness is. But the summer passes by in a string of beautiful barefoot hours. Stones are skipped to the beat of the music of a late dusk. A soft guitar riff is made from the twangy feeling of grass between our toes. We have time to not overthink thinking. Just admire the bustling traffic of forest floors. Tire swings dangling from oak arms. And the way his fingers brush across my back like the little green inchworms I’ve been finding all over. Every day. I’m not exactly sure what perfect happiness is. But this has got to be close. I say the inchworms will make me think of him. Of the stinging sweetness of August, when we laid in the grass and counted the remaining days. Inchworms. Small green reminders of a beautiful green boy. Full of life. Full of growth. Full of earth. I’m not sure which is harder: not knowing someone you love is leaving, or knowing it and still holding him. He makes me promise to care for the greenhouse. It’s now bursting with every color in my vocabulary. I make him promise to come back for my art display. The coffee shop is letting me have it there in the fall. “I promise,” he says.

  Quarry, Sturgeon Moon

  The night before Ezra leaves, we sit by the quarry. He plays me a song he wrote on the mandolin. “It’s for you,” he says. “A water song.” I close my eyes so I can really hear it. Swells and currents stream through a loose, floating melody. With notes that plink like raindrops. And some that ebb and flow like great sweeping tides. “I love it,” I say. He looks up while still playing. And says, “I love you, Hannah.” We curl up like a wave on the ground. Arms wrapped around each other’s bodies. Under a full moon he did not pray to tonight. But, then again, I think this is a kind of prayer, too.

  After, Day 1

  The sky is an empty shell today. Color sucked out like an oyster. Foggy, like the remains of a dream. Like it will wake up any second now to take inventory of what’s missing. Ezra took the colors with him when he left. Which makes sense, I guess. They flocked to the ones inside him. Drawn to like company. Migrating too soon. Too soon. Where did he learn to do that? And when will they come back?

  After, Day 10

  Who was I before that did not know this feeling? I was whole and self-contained, sure. But I woke up every morning without trying to remember the smell of someone else’s skin. Like recalling a dream on the tip of my tongue. Or just behind the eyelids. Without the fingers’ hazy memory of curls sprung. Arms touched. Who was I before that did not know this feeling?

  After, Day 30

  It’s been a month. He stopped writing me letters. He hasn’t returned my phone call for a week now. We’re in a drought and I haven’t seen a single inchworm since he left.

  An Unwelcome Truth

  Sam doesn’t look himself tonight. Like he has a sour taste in his mouth that seems to have nothing to do with the coconut lime milkshake I forced on him. “Okay, just tell me whatever it is that’s been bothering you for the last hour. I’ll buy you a Reese’s shake,” I say. Sam shifts in the booth, like he’s weighing a great problem. I take our fries hostage until he gives in. “I think I saw Ezra tonight,” he says. Not meeting my eyes. “What? Where?” “On the far corner of Main Street. By the theater. I’m not positive because he changed direction when I saw him. Started toward the quarry path.” “That’s not possible,” I stammer. He’s still not meeting my gaze. I can tell there’s something else he’s not telling me. “Sam, I…” “He was with someone else, Hannah. A girl I didn’t recognize.” That’s when confusion and hurt turn into rage. A rage that seems to be the only alternative to silence. “You’re wrong,” I practically shout. Turning a few heads nearby. “You’ve just always been waiting for him to mess up somehow. You see a guy who looks a little like him from far away and think the worst.” Now it’s my turn to leave the booth early. The milkshake unfinished. The friend sitting alone. I storm outside. I need the comfort of the river. But a voice somewhere in the back of my head, in the folds of my heart, in the pit of my stomach, says, Don’t go to the quarry tonight. There’s no comfort for you there.

  Troubling Phone Conversation #1

  “Hannah, it’s not that I don’t want to see you. I do. I’m just figuring some things out right now. And it has to happen here. Not in that town.” That town.It’s the first time since he moved here that he’s made it so apparent he’s an outsider. That he doesn’t belong. “Things? What things? I’ll help you figure them out.” “No. Thank you, but no,” he says. “It has to be just me. It’s just, I’m a different person here and I don’t know who to be when I go back to a place I already left behind.” Left behind. Ouch.

  Troubling Phone Conversation #2

  “Hannah, I didn’t cheat on you. Nothing happened. But I’ve been learning about this thing where someone is in more than one relationship at a time. And I think I need to try it.” “We need to try it?” I ask. “We. Yeeeessss. We.” You hesitated,I want to say. “It’s just, people have different needs. Changing needs, and…” Where have I heard this before?Immediately, I remember my brother wiping puffy, red eyes. Hiding them beneath his old baseball cap while I sat on my stool. My head on his shoulder. My arm around his back. “And we just don’t have what we once had?” I ask. “What? No. It’s not like that. It’s hard to explain. I still love you. It’s just that this is something separate. It’s kind of like, so you know how I’m a Capricorn? Earth, right? Well, I still have a lot of Sagittarius. Fire. And sometimes I need to let that take a little more control.” “And burn everything you planted?” I ask. “Well, I mean, sometimes scorch and burn is a healthy way to clear the landscape. Let the fire take over for a bit so that the earth can grow better afterwards. B
eing with other people, it wouldn’t mean anything. Just something new. Wouldn’t change how I feel about you. It’s just not all that fair to expect monogamy. Just one person for each person.” I bite my lip and command the water inside me not to slip out of my eyes. “Maybe you should just leave your landscape unplanted for a while. That does the same trick,” I say. “Don’t be like that,” he says.

  Unanswered Voicemail from Ezra #1

  “Listen, I’m sorry. I can tell this hurts you. We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Just promise me you’ll think it over and get back to me. I’ll come home next weekend and you can show me all the amazing things you’ve been making for that art show of yours.”

  Quarry, Harvest Moon

  There’s a full moon tonight. The first since he’s been gone. Which means he’s burning a bundle of sage. Prayers wafting upward like smoke. It’s the same moon hearing his pleas tonight that is also there for me. Over 100 miles away. And I wonder if he ever said a prayer for that. I wonder if he ever said a prayer for me. The moon says she owes me nothing. That this is how it should be. The boy who used to sit with me under the moon says he owes me nothing. I don’t believe this is how it should be. But, even when he’s gone, the moon tells me to love him just the same. I remember his words. “You have to let people be people.” I’ve always wanted him to be himself. I love him for always being himself. But I’ve been trying to stomach the idea of him holding someone else. And it comes to this: There are just some things I’m not okay with us being.

  A Knowing

  Renny senses we need to talk before I’ve even made it to his door with the stool. “It’s about Ezra, isn’t it?” I let go of everything. The secret visit. The unanswered messages. The college girls taking my place. When I finish, his face is a mix of stumped and concerned. He doesn’t threaten to go beat up my boyfriend. Or get angry like a lot of brothers would. And I’ve always loved him for that. He’s protective, but he realizes that most of the time, I need to protect myself. “Relationships are hard, complicated things, Hannah. It sounds like you’re starting off with a tough one.” He gives a slight smile. Then he adjusts his baseball cap and leans forward. Real talk. “So, I’ve always found it’s best not to change for people. Much better to change because of people. A relationship can teach you things you carry on to your next one. It can change your perspective or what you find you want. But, if someone asks you to change for them in a way you really can’t, then sometimes you just can’t.”

  A Decision

  I pick up the phone and finally call Ezra back. “I can’t do what you want. I thought about it. If I pretended like it was okay with me, I just know it would eat me up inside. Until I became a mimosa or poison ivy. And then I wouldn’t be me and we wouldn’t be us. You would lose me. That’s what would happen.”

  A Response

  I expected that to be the end of the conversation. He said we didn’t have to do it if I didn’t want to. That it mattered to him if it hurt me. But he sounded frustrated. “You just don’t understand. You can’t expect me to just be the old me when I’ve been changing here. And I could be this new me with girls here. And we would still have what we had before. I’d probably come home less, but…” “You don’t come home now,” I say. “Because it makes me anxious. I don’t know who to be right now.” “You always seemed to me like you know exactly who you are. That’s one of the things I like best about you,” I say. Ezra sighs. “I still love you and I want to be in a relationship with you. So I won’t have a relationship here then. Okay? Happy? I’ll just stick to a few meaningless romances on the side. Nothing emotional. Just figuring out attraction and desire and myself. Okay?” I know. I know, it’s not the same. At all. But I can’t help the flashback. That flashback. The drunken quarry night and all that emotionless touching. If that is really what he wants, then maybe we’re not as alike as I thought.

  A Resolution

  “No. Not okay. I love you, but I love myself, too,” I say. “You might not know who you are yet, but I know me. And if you don’t want me, then I don’t want this. The day you touch someone else is the day we’re through. Decide.” A long pause and a deep sigh. “Okay, okay. I’ll drop it.”

  A Completion

  A few days later, I put the finishing touches on the paintings of Ezra and me. One of us floating on our backs through a star-speckled sky. Another of him playing mandolin on top of the moon. Colors gushing from the neck of the instrument. At least half a dozen more. Finally ready to show him.

  Unanswered Voicemail #2

  He left me a message saying he has a test on Monday. He can’t come home after all. An anchor digs into my chest. Fine. I trade Renny my best flannel shirt for a day with his truck. Renny takes the shirt and I head off to surprise my flaky art student of a boyfriend.

  Surprise Visit, October

  The campus is so much bigger and fancier than I ever thought. Marble pillars and cobbled paths. Definitely not out of an old dairy and lumber town. The women here wear heels and leather jackets. Makeup that makes them look French and cat-like. I have no idea which dorm is his. I’m counting on him being in the library, cramming. But, as I cross the courtyard, I hear, “Hannah?” I turn. And say, “Victoria?” In the flesh. She wears a bright red miniskirt and a sheer midriff shirt. A kerchief tied around her neck to complete the outfit. Blonde hair puffs out to her shoulders as she stretches her long model legs beside a man-made pond. I’m planning on just giving her a grade-A stink eye and walking by. Then I do a double-take. There’s a boy sitting so close to her. Too close. He’s wearing a button-up black shirt with the V opened up on his chest. Neatly trimmed Beard. Close-cropped haircut on the sides with the top longer and slicked back. But those eyes. Those bright green eyes and a stray dark curl poking out on his temple. “Ezra?”

  A Betrayal

  Now I’m walking fast. Straight toward them. I can’t help it. Ezra jumps up in surprise. Victoria just looks me up and down in my oversized sweater, loose jeans, and ratty beanie. And laughs. “You look just like your brother,” she snickers. “So what’s wrong with that, princess?” I shoot back. I look to Ezra for some form of support. Now it’s my turn to be surprised. Ezra looks nervous and embarrassed. “Jeez, Hannah,” he says, under his breath. “Do you have to be such a boysometimes?” Before running, wordless, to Renny’s truck, I throw my whole stack of paintings right into the pond. I hope all the colors run together. And the pictures all blur beyond recognition. Like his memories. Like how I must have always been in his memory.

  Quarry, New Moon

  I skipped Coffee Shop Friday. That night the drought breaks. Everything the sky has been holding back thrashes and floods. Rain beating down on the land as I sit, sopping wet and not caring at all. It feels good to see the water wailing and commanding the earth like the sorceress it always was. That’s right, I think to myself. Water is the strongest force on earth. I am more powerful. And I will erode him. I realize all the women I know are rivers. Peaceful. Beautiful. Able to calm a man with one look. Fierce. Stormy. Able to destroy a man in one blow. Men have tried to navigate them. Use them for their own purposes. But, when it comes down to it, the rivers are the true force to be reckoned with. Men gain safe passage by learning to respect a river. Because the river gives and takes as it chooses. And, after all these years, I’ve decided the river is a woman. Yes. She must be a woman. To allow so many men in her waters and still be as strong as she is.

  An Uprooting

  There is still dirt under my fingernails from ripping up half the plants in his greenhouse. The ginkgos because I don’t want to remember. The jasmines because we’re not in love. The clovers because I don’t want to think of him. There is still dirt under my fingernails from him. There is still him under my fingernails.

  An Offering

  The night quickly grows cold and dark. But I can’t move. Can’t leave. So I lie down and fall asleep. I awake to a wool blanket draped across my body. Logs crackling. The smell of smoke and a pile of wood s
tacked neatly behind me. A reflector fire. Laying in the dirt, next to the makeshift pit. Glowing in the orange light is a purple lighter.

  Voicemails I Don’t Leave #1

  I know in the beginning you wanted more of a label. A banner. A cry to rally behind. I didn’t know how to do that. This was the best I had. The woman in me loved the man in you. Loved the boy in you. Loved the woman in you. Loved the woman, the boy woman in me. The boy in me loved the woman in you. The woman in me loved the woman in you. In you, in you, in you. The lines blur, but I know I loved in you. I didn’t know what to call that. Or me. Or us. I didn’t know I had to call it anything in particular. That, like a dog, it would only answer to a specific name. I never wanted to collar it anyways. The woman in the boy in the woman in me loved the woman in the boy in the woman in you. But I do know that, in the end, it was the man in you that left the woman in me. Yes. In the end, it was the man. And that, in particular. In naming. In calling it out for what it is. Is what is so hard to forgive.