dream about me
I think I want you to die first. I make this decision while we admire the small shrines arranged around the gravestones. I pick up one of the oranges that must have rolled away onto the sidewalk and return it to the clear plastic plate. Now they make a pair again. When you die, I will similarly gather tokens to arrange around your urn: a bowl of lightly salted, unbuttered popcorn; a sugar-free orange Powerade; the empty sleeve of promotional Grindr matches you kept on your coffee table; an empty wine bottle, maybe two if I am feeling generous; the yellow COS bathing suit you wore all last summer; the poem I wrote, which you’ve hidden somewhere in your apartment because you are reluctant to completely erase my presence even though I told you I wished I could forget you when I didn’t mean it; and finally, the first polaroid I took of you on New Year’s Eve.
I would prefer to remember you like that. Youthful. Innocent. Uncomplicated. Before the natural accretion of mistakes and regret and resentment transform you into someone unrecognizable. I am used to grieving your absence, and I find the image of myself collecting these offerings romantic—the ultimate performance of saying goodbye. This arrangement will be the apogee of my suffering, reducing you to a handful of sentimental objects. I convince myself everything afterward will be easy, like a bicycle gathering speed as it rolls downhill, carried forward by gravity and momentum with a rush of adrenaline that makes me feel stupid and giddy, the same sensation as when we fell in love.
We whisper to each other in the lower level of the mausoleum. We are alone. But the setting itself demands our hushed reverence. The white marble hallways are monumental and lined with alcove crypts where mourners can grieve out our immediate sightline, the possibility of intruding on someone’s visit enough to deter us from any rowdy impulse. Each tomb is inscribed with a name, birth date, and death date. I have a stupid realization. Oh, there is a body on the other side of this panel of stone. Sobering. Some of the gates to the alcove crypts are ajar, so I gently close them, worried lingering spirits may find this oversight offensive. A wall in one of the alcoves is decorated with a tile mosaic of a sunset over a landscape of hills, the sun encircled by thumbnail-sized tiles that fade from pale yellow to lavender to blue. A single, skinny cypress tree stands in the foreground. It gives the scene a Biblical atmosphere. There are several signs that warn us: No photographs. I take a photo of the mosaic anyway. My reverence is limited.
An Uber driver who picked me up from O’Hare a few weeks prior asked me if I believed in ghosts. I was adamant. No. My blunt response was an attempt to end the conversation because I was nauseous—too much caffeine and too little sleep before my flight. Instead, the driver questioned me further. Do you believe in God? No, I said. What about aliens? Definitely not. C’mon, what do you believe in? Any conspiracy theories, something really crazy?
Nothing, I suppose. He invited me to his church. You’re a good soul. I can tell. Don’t let yourself lose that light, he warned. Hmm, I’ll try.
A month before we stopped talking, I bought a black Chopova Lowena dress with puff sleeves. I sent a photo of myself wearing the dress to Liv and asked her opinion. It’s not flattering, she admitted, it makes your chest look bigger. I trusted her assessment. She knew that I was self conscious about the size of my breasts after my augmentation. But I kept the dress regardless. I had already fantasized about it for months, checking daily to see if the price dropped, picturing myself wearing it on a grassy hillside in Wisconsin while wind grabbed at the semi-sheer, textured fabric and transformed me into a melancholic figure—like a lone tree contrasted against an endless landscape. A short-lived fantasy. I was waitlisted for ACRE and received the official rejection a few weeks ago. Oh well. The residency is in early August, and I would have sweat profusely in the Midwestern heat, stinking like a can of tuna.
You told me the dress looked like something a Southern lady would wear to church. I wore it while we said goodbye, sitting across from one another on your couch. I cried nonstop. I decided to wear it everywhere after that day and refer to it as my “Mourning Dress,” a moniker I intend to be funny and somewhat endearing. My grief would become a daily practice, like journaling, or making hard boiled eggs, or sweeping the floor. Everyone I confessed this detail to regarded me with a pitying look. Hmm. Not funny or endearing, I guess.
Bun was impressed that I wore the dress on my 7am Amtrak train to Springfield and later to the Abraham Lincoln Home where we flipped a quarter to decide if we should stay for the tour or leave for lunch. The commemorative coin landed with the reverse side visible—a picture of Anna May Wong. Lunch. We all sighed in relief. None of us were brave enough to vocalize our desire—preferring to leave our fate to chance.
Bun, Ruby, and I tried to buy bathing suits at the Walmart Supercenter across from the hotel. The bikinis and one-piece swimsuits unnerved me. I didn’t bring tucking underwear and worried about my inevitable bulge. And more truthfully, I’m snobbish, preferring my designer clothes, the sense of distance they give me from my upbringing and the way they distinguish me from other women, cis or trans. I considered a pair of cotton gym shorts and a tank top, carrying them around while I tried to find Bun and Ruby. Buying something new felt symbolic and weighty, an admission that I was entering a new phase. I hesitated and hid the clothes behind packages of boxer briefs in the underwear section, where I found Bun excitedly clutching a pack of white tank tops. These tank tops are impossible to find in Chicago, they explained, our local Walmart picked over by countless other dykes and transmascs. This is not an issue in Springfield, Illinois evidently. We decided against the hotel pool. We would drink in the hotel room and watch You’ve Got Mail. I removed the dress before getting into bed with Ruby and hoped I might shed my sadness with the fabric. Instead I dreamed of you.
You and I lay together in the morning sun. I rearranged the books on my windowsill the day before to symbolize a change. They cast an angular shadow across your abdomen. I grip the undersides of your thighs and massage your subterranean hamstring muscles. You look like the subject of a Lou Fratino painting, or a Nan Goldin photograph. Your head rests on the pillow, your gaze focused somewhere on my torso, my nipples or stomach, which you held lovingly in the middle of the night after we finished our leftover Chinese food. We played an episode of Serial in the background. Your expression was blank and childish while you spooned rice into your open mouth, leaning forward to avoid spilling food on my bed. You accidentally dropped a few grains of rice. Ha. My little zoo animal, I thought, and then said it aloud. Except I didn’t use the possessive. I opted for an article. A little zoo animal. I no longer felt a sense of ownership over you. You smiled. I smiled. What are you thinking? I asked. You deftly avoided speaking first and volleyed the question back to me, placing emphasis on the pronoun: What are you thinking? Nothing. Everything is easier.
Image: Natalie Terenzini, Looking Back, 2023.
Current obsessions: Dorothy Baker’s “Cassandra at the Wedding.”