Out Of The Blue
By Gaby Dunn
“I remember going running and consciously thinking, ‘Okay, you are not going to think about her this entire run’ but it never worked,” you say.
“You can’t just make yourself stop thinking about someone,” I respond. I am talking about you. You are talking about someone else.
Great.
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I text you that my chest hurts when I am with you. It’s a screwy thing: to confide in you — about you. I supremely lack boundaries, something I will learn more and more in the next six months. You tell me that what I’m feeling is connection. You tell me that for the first time, I want intimacy and so I am scared. I tell you I want us to run.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZJJiW1z3QY]
“When you love somebody / it’s hard to think about / anything but to breathe.”
We are drunk and it’s late and I reach across the table to try to hold your hand, but you pull it away and I tell you that I don’t want you to pity me and you say you don’t, that’s not what this is. Earlier when you’d run a finger over my arm, I yanked it away giggling, “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” I think you think it’s a joke but it’s not a joke because I am on fire around you and I don’t actually think I can handle you touching my arm. I always feel like I want to touch you. The entire time we’re together I can barely think from how badly.
You’re talking about something sad and I’m staring at you and I’m too drunk and I won’t remember what you’re saying and I want to. I want to remember. I want to record everything we talk about and all of our interactions because I’m starting to lose track of what’s really happened and what I’ve imagined you doing.
You tell me you have an excellent memory and I say that unnerves me because you’ll remember every little twist of my lips or misplaced joke and you prove that you do because you remember when we met and a time before I cared about you at all. You make fun of me, say I was dicking around on my phone the whole time you tried to talk to me, giving one word answers, wanting nothing to do with you. I vaguely remember that. I say I want to go back in time. I say I want to climb into your lap. You laugh.
I convince you to leave the bar we’re at with mutual friends and go somewhere with me alone. You don’t hesitate, you just ask casually — “What bar?” I’m being selfish, but you keep going along with me for a reason I’m not entirely sure about.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkNa5xzOe5U]
“Your sorry eyes / they cut through bone/ They make it hard / to leave you alone.”
My body is thrumming when it’s with you. I remember an ee cummings poem that says, “I like my body when it is with your body.” At one point I tell you that, sitting across from you, I am shaking.
“Don’t make fun of me,” I say, showing you my quivering leg. “I’m in pain.”
The poem ends, “And possibly I like the thrill / of under me you quite so new.”
You tell me if we’d gotten drunk and made out as soon as we’d met, I’d be over this and maybe that’s true but also, I think you’re making excuses. You’re uncomfortable with how I feel about you. You say I have you on a pedestal.
Later you will squeeze me to you and say, “You were so dramatic back then.” I will laugh. I will not feel I was being dramatic at all.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upQk-O2k67U]
“Out of this world / out of the blue / out of this love for you.”
“This is surprising,” you say. And it is. It’s surprising. It came out of nowhere like a magician pulling a rabbit from a small hat. There wasn’t room for it, until: magic.
My nail polish when we kiss is light blue too, which is the kind of silly symbolism only writers or other dreamy idiots look for: Like real life is a novel in a high school English class and the essay question is to find connections between mundane coincidences.
Blue. Out of the blue. I touch you with blue hands and we came out of the blue. It’s a little bit funny.
I don’t tell you about it, but I don’t run either.