Vinegar-soaked fish and chips in a London pub, our families escaping the summer heat in 2006. You, me, your brother, my sister, all of us in a dark wood booth beside a window. English bric-a-brac, the smell of Guinness. In the spring, we’d both graduated from the University of Oklahoma and turned twenty-two within months of each other, which meant we’d known each other half our lives.

I remember the sound as a thud, an enormous, blunt thud, louder and more resonant than anything I ever heard before. My head jerked sideways, then returned to center buffeted by a wave of air. I knew something bad had happened, something irreversible; nothing good makes a sound that big.

My mind is fucking racing. I lay here in thick, suffocating silence, stranded in the gulf between nausea and despair. Curled in the fetal position I stare. I stare at the poster haphazardly hung on the wall outside my door. It’s unframed, the corners curling at the edges. I used to love this risograph print of Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums, sitting in her bathtub, hands draped over the edges as she stares at something I can’t see.

It’s been eight years since you left me. The same amount of years we’ve been together. Has it really been that long?

I still have your letter, but today, I think it’s only fair that I write this letter back to you. To bring up the things left unsaid between us. To ask all the questions I never got to ask.

Some hot and humid afternoon in July, it was the 20th, a Wednesday, I think, I ventured off into the unknown abyss of modern lesbianism and vegan Asian cuisine. The sweat trickled down the crisp colored skin of my forearms as I made my way from the bus stop to an unfamiliar vegetarian Asian restaurant with an obnoxiously huge sunflower sculpture on top. The hostess greeted me.

It's been a year since I haven't had breasts, and I think I’m pretty well adjusted. At first, I thought that I was going to have new breasts made from fat taken off somewhere else on my body, but it turns out that I lack “the right kind of fat,” so, at the last moment, I opted to forgo reconstruction.  

“Why me” never crosses your mind. Maybe you feel it’s inevitable; after all, your best friend and first boyfriend both died from cancer—not breast like you, but cancer nonetheless. And your favorite grandfather and most of his brothers and sisters—except the sister who died in the influenza epidemic—died of cancer.

My grandmother’s teeth have been the lively topic of family jokes for many years. This is not cruel, but rather a kind of family shorthand, coded with her legacy of the need for levity during adversity. Even today, mention of my grandmother’s teeth prompts laughter and joy.

I am standing in front of the microwave with its door open, ready to insert the bag of popcorn I’ll have for dinner. As I reach for the bag, I hear the lush opening notes of “The Blue Danube Waltz” by Johann Strauss. My body freezes, immobilized as if zapped by some 1950s, paralyzing ray gun. Before I can turn around to see if it’s an ad on TV, my eyes puddle up.

It’s hot. I wear an old tye-dye dress and sneakers, my bangs stuck to my sweaty forehead. Photographs will later reveal I have the sort of bowl haircut stylists default to when you’re too young to know what you want, and your parents just want something cheap that won’t get gum stuck in it. I’ve come to a standstill on the sidewalk to watch a mosquito bite my bare calf.

I never felt comfortable saying “my body” or “the body;” it never felt like mine, yet it also seemed more personal than “the.” Growing up, it was commented on: You’re so skinny, so petite, what a tiny peanut, you should really eat more, better hang onto that figure. No one ever said anything about my 4.0 Grade Point Average, the poetry contests I won, or the dreams I had of escaping the life of expected bodily perfection.

Even in the musty Catskills cottage my parents rented during the summer I came of age, their bed was the place we went to heal. Even as tiny, satin ballet slippers hung from the mahogany headboard and a pink chenille spread covered it, like a sticky sweet frosting, this lumpy mattress was where we found succor.

Cameron, my boyfriend of six months, sits across from me in the cheap, Canton Chinese restaurant where we always eat. The white-walled, empty space fills with light through the windows, and wood tables are vacantly spread throughout. We look at each other blankly. The only sounds that come out our mouths are loud chews and slurps of stir-fry noodles hitting our lips with long, hungry uncomfortableness.

Modern love doesn’t mean a type of love we haven’t seen before, but it does mean it’s a love still seen as radical by those it encounters. It makes people look twice when they see you walking down the street. It makes your friends comment, “I’m so happy for you!” on your Instagram pics. It both surprises and entangles everyone it meets, creating an aura they begin to crave as well. It’s the type of love they should really be making potions for.

“I think you’re better off without me.” I blubbered, my hair thick in unwashed, oily residue. My clothes, more suitable for sleeping than for wearing out, a mess. As I heard myself say those words, I almost didn’t recognize myself. I, the romantic. The believer of fairy-tales and forever afters.

“Learn to make collages. Water your plant. Collect lucky pennies.”

Let’s be honest, you’re not going to make collages or collect lucky pennies. That seems like a waste of time. You do, however, eat a weed brownie and read Claudia Rankine’s Citizen in one sitting at a bar.

My mother’s treats have always been unexpected, precious morsels,
savored as much for their surprise as for their flavor—
a summer lunch of a lobster roll and coffee frappe at Gulf Hill creamery,
a butterscotch candy retrieved from deep within a purse,

I am difficult to love. I know that. And I’m pretty impossible to live with. Trust me, I recognize that too. I’m stubborn, have high expectations, and can be a smart ass. Luckily for me, I fell in love with someone with the exact same qualities. Clearly everything goes smoothly in our house on a daily basis. I’ve never found myself saying, “Do you even know what a toilet bowl brush looks like?”

Everyone has a chapter they don't read out loud. The Why is different for everyone. Why don't they talk about it? Sometimes, it is feelings of shame, guilt, regret, pain, or loss. Other times it is feelings of joy, hope, love, triumph. If the feelings about a situation are considered to be negative, I guess I understand more why someone wouldn't share it.

I still get pangs of guilt when I go by a hospital
and I remember the 3am, 7am, 11pm or Saturday 1pm calls
beckoning me to reach into myself and pull out some sort of aid for another person.
Reaching into the mess,