Ava Ashtiani

I visited his late grandmother’s house in December, met his mom for the first time, and played cards on the wooden dining room table while sipping on microwaved mint tea. The house sat on the bottom of a hill, a small, one story ranch style with uncomplicated rooflines. He took me through the back entrance, pushing past a sliding glass door. It was a familiar habit of his, and for the first time I was a part of it. The house bordered a golf course that overlooked the city at the thirteenth hole. After brief hello’s and it’s nice to finally meet you’s we walked it by ourselves, the three of us, clad in worn coats and shy boots that followed the trails of conversation. We smiled quietly as leaves and decay cried under us, the lazy descent of the sun tracking our movements without offering warmth. I held my breath instead of saying the wrong thing. Hopeful at first, always hopeful, until it started to rain.  The walls of the house were much like any other: colored, cream, and cracking...

I prolong the amount of time  I spend in  the shoes of my stress.  I’m learning  how to regulate  the silent  suffocation,  the laces on my hands. They are so full of things  I think I need to carry  but, ultimately, never can. 

He smiles when I cry. A soft one, before he embraces me.  Like he just needed to observe the way the emotion  changes my features.  Soak up the hopelessness shimmering in my eyes  and grab me just before  I can suffocate on my own breathless oxygen.  He likes to feel like he is saving me.  Sometimes he says something terrible  just to watch me crumble  and then be the one to pick me up. His vocabulary consists of: “Why do you always pick a fight” ’s and “You never believe me anymore, Carmine” ’s He tells me that I look beautiful when I cry, and I realize that he thinks this makes up for it.  That he thinks I want to feel beautiful as I fall apart.  He's a romantic and a manipulator.  I let him be both. Mostly because I don’t know how to play victim as well  as he does.  “Do you even notice all the things I do for you?” He threatens to leave me.  I break down and cry.  “Oh Car-Mine, you’re all mine,” he sooth...

and maybe that’s what it was I could never love you enough- not all of you. I was careful to avoid the sharp pieces of your personality and yet not careful enough. You pierced my skin with  every embrace and I grew used to pain, started piercing you back because it was like this you taught  me how to love. So, eventually, I embraced all of you while resenting those parts that didn’t hurt me and when I found a blade of my  own, I stuck it in the soft skin  between your chest and jaw so all of you could bleed and look just as red as me.

June feels like a whisper of something I should already know Half asleep under a sun that sets at the edge of epiphany Drunk off the heat of needing to be nothing June feels like a gentle hand against the pressure of absence Coaxing light through an open window for tangible hope Radiating in the understanding of a slow summer June feels like a mother to a child of impatience Singing a lullaby the pattern of time Rocking to the sound of rivers and moving things June feels like a worn out pendant of gold Warm against skin, soft against hurt Kissing my neck with promises of lasting people June is the familiar stranger who still feels like mine Dancing in the corners of possession  Allowing grief to remember its place in this home While I wonder what it is I should already know

I tread on water before your anger can break through the surface I hold my breath when you open your mouth but it doesn’t matter what you say I am already under water  I wonder if drowning would be easier than this We are already cold in this dead sea so what are we fighting for? You, I want to say that I am fighting for you but you are already gone You leave only your body and your words behind You breathe CO2 into my lungs with each blame and I let you, mistaking it for love You watch me die with a straight face Take all of me. I have nothing else to offer anyone this far deep in you

Deciding whether you were a coward or a saint never gets me somewhere solid. I think I would like you to know me now while I simultaneously think that I would not. It is painful, how much of a contradiction I appear to be to myself. There is much I would like to tell you. Where should I begin? I have finished a novel that made me sad. I am sure you would find some of yourself in it. Some things do that to people, reveal who they are without warning or consent. I forget how to ask for help. Saint. Oftentimes I do not know how to tell people I would do better to be alone. I am not sounding like myself. It isn’t my fault. I get this way when I have consumed art. I like that I get to feel like somebody else while still being me. It is just another contradiction I get to exist as. I am struggling to convince myself that I am stronger than my desires. It’s hard because I feel weak everytime I think about you. Coward. I am so used to turning against reason simply for the sake of doing that I ...