Tom Healy

We’re talking about when we met and you say it was easier to fall for me thinking (I’ll remember this pause) it was likely I’d be dead by now. Talking. Falling. Thinking. Waiting . . . Have I undone what you’ve tried to do? You say no. You say the surprise of still being is something being built— the machine of our living, this saltwork of luck, stylish, safe, comfortable and unintended. Meanwhile, I haven’t had the opportunity to tell you, but our lovely little dog has just killed a possum. Maybe it’s unfair, a possum entering the argument here. But I lay it down before us: because an ugly dying  possum played dead and didn’t run, its dubious cunning was brought to an end outside our door by our brutal, beautiful and very pleased little dog. So how do I say that this is not about death or sadness or even whether you really first loved me waiting, thinking I’d be dying young? It’s just that standing there a few minutes ago holding a dead possum by its repellent bony tail, I was struck by how eerily pleased I was to be a spectator to teeth, spit, agony and claw, feeling full of purpose, thinking how different in our adversaries we are from possums. We try love— the fist of words, their opening hand. And whether we play dead or alive, our pain, the slow circulation of happiness, our salt and work, the stubborn questions we endlessly give names to haunt us with choice.

What do we do when we hate our bodies? A good coat helps. Some know how to pull off a hat. And there are paints, lighting, knives, needles, various kinds of resignation, the laugh in the mirror, the lie of saying it doesn’t matter. There is also the company we keep: surgeons and dermatologists, faith healers and instruction-givers, tailors of cashmere and skin who send their bills for holding our shame-red hands, raw from the slipping rope, the same hands with which we tremble ever so slightly, holding novels in bed, concentrating on the organization of pain and joy we say is another mirror, a depth, a conjure in which we might meet someone who says touch me.