I. Dating as Theatre 

Dating is as much theatre as it is love. Every audition echoes the uncertainty of a first date but at least this time you know what you’re going to say. I’ll read my lines, take my cues, and wait for you to do the same. Sometimes the curtain closes after a couple drinks, sometimes it never does, and I’ll wait on stage with my script in my back pocket until that happens. I’ll wonder how good of an actor you are – how badly you want to prove yourself and how loud the applause will be at the end. 

Maybe it’s a contest of who’s better under the lights. I mean, what are the chances we both walk away with the Oscar? I can’t even tell how much I’m acting anymore, and I want to feel like a person who truly likes but at some point it may have become for show. I’m afraid I can only read my lines so many times before they fall flat. I hope they don’t blame me for my pessimism just as I don’t blame them for their delusion. They can play whatever part they want – morph into the character the role calls for and call me honey sweet. It’s not cruelty if it’s art, and I’m the best audience you could ever want. 

The stage lights will brush my skin the same way they did in a time that never belonged to me. One day, you could win best actor, me best actress, and at that point maybe we’re no longer pretending.

II. Dating as Growing Up 

We’re both playing tag, yet neither of us knows who’s it, and we’re addicted to the chase aren’t we? We’re trying to emulate the escape of youth as we sit on your navy sheets, and I tap my foot on the carpet. We’re ignoring the images of your race car bed and my princess sheets from way back when, and maybe we should go back to the sandbox to play in it. Maybe I need some crayons, finger paints, pipe cleaners, anything to fill my hands that isn’t you. I just wish to be the little girl walking barefoot in the summer sun, climbing the oak tree in the front yard and blowing on dandelion puffs. It’s all too familiar, and we’ve both been here before. We keep on aching to get lost in something so much larger than ourselves, but all I want is to be that girl again. 

You’re cupping my face half past midnight, rotten naivety flowing under a teenage moon. She’s giggling because boys have cooties while I’m kicking myself for the way my breath hitches as you whisper in my ear. Maybe the butterflies I feel are the same ones that kissed my shoulder when I was six. We’re playing on the schoolyard, and you’re mean to me, and I’m told it’s because you like me. You’re pulling my hair, you’re calling me names, and my face burns red all the same. I feel the same way I did when I came home from the river, my clothes muddy and shoes squishing with every step. My mom told me that I needed to take a shower immediately, that I was filthy. I couldn’t disagree. I don’t know when things got this far, when I got so distant from who I used to be. What I would give to be laughing on the swingset again with my feet painting the sky. 

III. Dating as Obsession 

I want to be where you lay. I want to sink my teeth into the places you’ve been. I want to do all you’ve done. Tell me the stories from when you were young and dumb, sword fighting with sticks in the Alabama sun. Let your mother tell me how you laughed when you were little and show me pictures of you on Halloween so many years ago. You were dressed up as Batman with your mask falling into your eyes and chocolate smeared on your upper lip. Take me to where you call home, and it will be mine too.

I’m tracing the lines in my palm, pretending it’s yours, and I can’t seem to find myself even when I’m right in front of myself. I’m heaving and begging and pleading. My chin’s between your thumb and index finger and you could snap my neck with one movement. Your eyes are everything I’ll ever know and, please, please, I’ll do anything to have you never look away. I’ll change the shape that I’m in. I’ll bleed even better than before. I press my lips to yours and let my kisses be an apology for everything I’m not. 

I’m drinking tonight, and it’s going to be ugly. I’ll think of you when the alcohol scorches the back of my mouth, and I’m glaring at myself in the bathroom mirror. Somewhere in that liquor-soaked haze I see your ghost next to me and you have feral gnashing teeth, desperate and ferocious. I’ll give myself over, expose the white of my neck and let the bruises show in the morning. My love for you breathes on its own; it’s hurting my chest, my body creaks with it. “I love you more.” You can’t. You can’t. Make me your martyr. I want my last breath to be between your lips. Feel free to rip me apart, spread me open, you’re holding my bones together after all.

IV. Dating as Home 

You smile your cherry stained lips, and I can see the bag of gas station gummy worms hanging out of your jeans pocket. Our backs are cradled by a languid sun as the day settles into something balmy and hopeful. We don’t have to worry about making it out. We’ve quieted down; we laugh loudly. You know the most authentic version of me, the one wearing the sleep shirt, torn up and from cross country in tenth grade, and sleeping with a pink unicorn stuffed animal from when I was seven. The name of the street that I grew up on is the name of the bakery a couple blocks down the road. Our neighbor’s dog has the same name as the lab you had growing up. Your smile is soft and warm, and it feels like forever. 

This summer we’ll go to the quarry and the days will be tinged with unspoiled hope as the water makes us feel light, dreamy and distant, in its embrace. In the fall we’ll carve out pumpkins and roll cookie dough between our hands, so that by December we’ll be cozy by the firelight. You hold my face in the morning and tell me you love me, and maybe that’s all I ever needed.

V. Dating as Memory 

I wish we could be normal people. We were confused, star-crossed, and my knees are bruised from throwing myself at our grave. I choke on your name in hopes of feeling your heartbeat next to mine. Maybe there’s a world where the sun sets in the east and I don’t remember where on your hips I’d run my thumb in circles. I palm the sky as if it’s your cheek and configure false constellations of your face. It starts to rain at some point and I want to tell you that you have so little to be sorry for, that no river could wipe my memory of you, so please don’t try. At some point, some time ago, your hair was stuck to my skin as you sewed kisses on my jaw and down my chest, and now I’m rubbing my ribs from which our love was born. Why couldn’t we be normal? We held each other in the back of the car I still drive, and I can’t get rid of the smell of your cologne. I look for you in every stranger I meet. I wonder how the morning light would caress the contours of their collarbone and whether or not it would feel the same under my fingers. 

I’m trying to break you down in soft fistfuls in my mind, make you evaporate with a feather’s touch yet instead I have two hands clasped pounding on your chest. Maybe, I can feel your ribs break under the pressure, maybe they’re mine, maybe there’s no difference. I’m thinking of you holding me when the thunder started to yell last December, and I thought about how I hoped our kids would get your eyes. I knew more than what you looked like naked. I knew the shape of your soul. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.