By Mia Arias Tsang
In the dream, you let me down just like all the years before. I know you like I know the insides of my eyelids. Still, I’m ready for you to surprise me. Just in case. In the dream it’s someone’s friend’s birthday. Someone with a job title so vaguely official it sounds fictional (data analyst) and a fluorescent apartment with a massive astroturf balcony suspended in the Midtown glitterbomb. I should be feigning festivity and wine literacy from the comfort of the white suede couch. Instead I’m immobilized outdoors, waiting for a text from you that will never come. I lean my hips against the railing as rain slices through me. Over the edge, an infinite obsidian plummet. I tilt my head back, dip my hair into the storm. In the dream you promised you’d make time before you left the city. (I know it’s a dream because it’s my city, not yours.) But I cried the night before, knees straddling your lap, hips bucking around your indifferent fingers. I tilted my head back. Forced my tears to slide sideways off my cheeks and into my ears. All sounds muted and I pretended we were underwater. I wanted you there in the silence with me. I wanted one moment where our Venn diagrams of truth became a circle. But more than that I wanted—still want—to see you happy, and they say death by drowning is euphoric right before the black. I always know it’s coming. I always know before you do.
Mia Arias Tsang is a writer and proud (yet hopeless) lesbian. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Autostraddle, Half Mystic Press, Bullshit Lit, Fatal Flaw Magazine, and Broad Recognition, Yale’s intersectional feminist magazine, among others. She lives in New York City with her cat, Peanut. You can find her on Twitter @cool4asecond
