You deserve to hear this.
In another life you might hear it different. From someone else, some other way, some other place. But this is how. This here. Because because.
All life is waiting.
The dog is dying and my girl don’t talk. She pronounces in her heart what feels right and that’s enough. The flaw of God in her, a little in everybody. Her brainstem denies death but I seek the character of God.
The dog howls.
Hecate lingers at the threshold. My girl and I do this thing, we eat each other mouth to mouth, cheek to jowl. Chew our suffering bodies. A friendly cannibalistic urge.
On the darkest day of the year you went. It means something. Maybe I’m nagged by the promise of meaning because I see what I don’t believe.
Faith in infrastructure. Architects and unions.
Industry standards, soon to be available anywhere emotion fails.
Her cat, always absent even when he’s here.
Feels good to be entrusted with all the things a life entails, so she can forget about the cat for a while. A certain degree of neurosis is healthy.
Like, what if she has no intention of picking up the cat? Don’t fixate.
Will the cat love me?
What does the cat like?
If I fail the cat, am I failing her?
I might be loving the cat.
Cat got hurt while we played. I love the cat. What is love? Why do I always profane and diminish the word and then the target of the word.
If that’s not love, what is? You don’t let something like that get away. You chase it. Stalk it. Post up at its escape routes.
You’re the only one crazier than me and I feel less alone knowing you. I’ve waited for this. I believe in signs and synchronicity. You might want something else but in this life you’re getting me. I’m worried about not trying everything. We’ll have a dinner party. You, me and the cat. I’ll light candles and randomize a playlist. I’ll leave the projector playing something. I’ll cook a steak but forget to use butter and undercook the steak.
You can have things that are just for you. You don’t have to share all the lewds. You need to focus on your career. You yearn to drown in creative fever. I like the ways we’re wrong for each other too, the moot romance, the faintly serenaded rhythms. All roads lead back to silence. All God’s days are good days. See I needed to hear that sound for a holy Lenten. To break form, tame the tension by meeting with reality on the regular. Truth is tender. Life is always short so say the last thing you would say on a short fuse and the first thing you would say if you had all the time in the world. I adore you. Do you wanna be that weird thing that happened last February?
But the love made you shit for brains, so you’re standing plainly, waving truth shaped holes around. New information could ruin your career and it can’t be enough to find joy in the process.
The cat’s swansong, knocking over bottles of potent-scented perfume, emanating an intoxicating potpourri as you giggle and promise to replace everything. Happiness is a good look on you.
That’s why I’m screaming at you to answer the phone.
-- Manuel Marrero is the founder/editor-in-chief of Expat Press and the author of the novels Thousands of Lies (2015) and Not Yet (2019). He is currently working on his third novel, Bodycount, from which this excerpt is adapted.