Absorb Me

Chandeliers have never lit a room so dimly. The carpet suffocates underneath your leather heels as you make your way toward me, the certain destination you yearned to reach. You smell like weed which makes me feel less queasy than last time. Last time the vodka I could smell it so clearly that it burned in the back of my eyes. Your scent lingering in the high point of the bridge of my nose deep between my eyes. Your arms lingering around me after a drowning embrace. I’ll never forget that hotel. I’ll never forget that night. I sat in large velvet chairs that made me feel like I was sinking into more than just dread.

“It’s great to see you”

I wish it was. I wish I knew why. I wish I felt the same way back. I wish I could lead you to a dark room, not the other way around. You always told me I was too greedy, I wanted too much. But that was playful. When you brought me hot chocolate. Things as simple as Kraft Mac and Cheese and Ramen were made for me. Now I’m given expensive brunches and I get to perch under crystal lighting in soft chairs meant for queens like I was a chickadee waiting for things to be given to me. I wish I was a blue jay, I took what I wanted. I fought for what I wanted. I fight for what I want.

The elevator stood still as if it was watching someone who dropped their change on a tile floor. A simple action made for such a loud reaction. The doors spread apart like the separation of me and- well any separation. She yearned for a loud noise, some climactic annoyance of each step his dirty soul made toward their hotel room. But the carpet just absorbed the abuse deep inside itself. No screaming, no creaking, no crying. Quick paced silent steps put her in first place. A race to their hotel room. She could not stand trailing behind a sickly smell moving at such a slow pace. She needed to make it to the hotel room. She wanted it to be over. So she decided that she would be the leader. And suddenly she was lowest on the social chain, lower than a follower, lower than a peasant.

“A little tight, huh?”

That’s when he slapped my ass. Like a girl in a music video. The music videos that teenage girls of today’s world obsess over. I was a girl in the moment. Not Sophie Chu-O’Neil, but a female. And he could do whatever he wanted to me because of that. Last time I said I love you and goodbye I meant it in a light way. This time it was more bitter. My teeth stung after every consonant, piercing my heart how little I meant the words I said. The guilt will always be there. More than just the moment. More than a slap. More than feeling like an object. Not the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but the worst degradation I’ve ever felt.

“I love you.”

It will never mean what it used to after the time spent in that hotel. After the day you gripped my wrist last fall. The day you held my one wish over my head. This was not dinner you were serving me this was my future and by holding that over my head you lost my love. I’m sorry. I will always be sorry for not loving you anymore. I will always feel guilty that I couldn’t value blood over water, but I do. I will die of dehydration if all I have is your blood to survive on.

I wanted to read this piece in class because what we carry is less of a weight on our shoulders but more of a weight dragging down our happiness. For this essay, I disregarded the prompt. This is supposed to be about what I carry, but this is more than that. I can let go of what I am burdened with carrying. But this is different. This is something that consumed me like a parasite. This lives and breathes inside me. We don’t talk about these things in class; no one knows about the things that one another are truly absorbed by. This is shallow, the bare minimum, yet still too deep to be shared with a class of twelve or so kids. Anything ‘too deep’ is not what is carried, but what consumes us. So here I stay bound by guilt, consumed by each bee sting on the tips of his fingers with no one to tell.