In the middle of the night I am kept company by one thought, my eyes held open by a singular idea: I would fucking kill someone for a boyfriend.
I roll over on one side and my mind is kicking me in the face. Fuck a man. Fuck having someone to remember other than myself every night. Fuck a golden name plate necklace, fuck flowers in February, fuck dinner dates and matching outfits, fuck morning kisses and fuck sweaty palms kissing sweaty palms. Then I roll onto the other side and I'm cold. Think, if I had me a baby I wouldn't feel like this. Think, life could be so much warmer than this. Think, I could try. Think, I don't deserve this. This lonely. This sour taste under my tongue, leaching into all my meals. I'm touch-starved. Think, what bones am I willing to break to make room for touch?
Answer: none of them. All of them. My tibia, my cranium, all ten phalanges. My sternum I would split in half, one for him, one for me. But I like being whole. I have learned to walk with myself. How do your heels fall when they're tied by an invisible cord to someone else?
Exes perform a circus act in my memory—flying men who lie and disappear, smile, lie, disappear, like a magic trick. Elephants that stomp out my spinal cord, drink up all my energy. Love that leaves me hanging upside down from the trapeze.
I think of calling them all. Boys from Brooklyn, Manhattan, White Plains, the Bronx. Even Connecticut boys. Apple juice and a straw in a champagne glass boys. I want to call each one, and crawl inside the phone line, and live there, in the sound and space between myself and him and what was and now shall be. I wonder which one would fall out of the sky if I said come follow me. Which one would rise from the dead if I asked to fuck.
I call Mandy. Mandy with two boyfriends, one husband, four kids, eight years between us, big enough to house a whole life, separate an ocean. Being sisters is a lot like learning how to swim.
"Solo?"
"Amanda. Good morning, girl."
"Soleil, it's one a.m. There is no good in this morning. I'm lying in my bed, trying to sleep so I don't die at the wheel tomorrow morning—you better be even closer to death than me."
"I'm lonely, Mandy," I tell her. In my head, this is my reflection: a singing bowl with no song.
"Jesus and Mary, Soleil. You tryna tell me I'm awake at one in the morning because your house is empty?"
"It's not this house that's empty, it's me, Amanda. This shit is desolate because I am the shit that is desolate."
"Well, Goddamn, Goddamn. What can I do? I'll call the police, arrest the house plants for not keeping you entertained."
"I want to die, Amanda," I say, finally. It's funny, the way words climb out from under you. "I've been thinking about it for three weeks. I was going to buy a rope this morning, but I overslept. The store closed without me."
Silence chews the other end. I can hear her thinking, the cogs tightening in her brain.
"You serious, Soleil?"
"About the rope? No," I tell her. "It was always pills. I'm too scared it won't work with ropes. And what does that mean, for a black girl to lynch herself?"
Quiet is the loudest noise. It whispers in my ears, weighs down my chest.
"You got a computer near you, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart. She's pitying me. Or afraid of me. Turn the sad thing small, turn the bad thing off.
"Mhm," I answer her. "I'm not going to kill myself, though, Mandy. You don't have to worry. I wouldn't call you if I was."
