"The One-Hundred-Six Pound Marriage That Wasn’t"

Joaquin’s presence — drifting in and out of my life like a tide that refuses to obey the moon — has left me anxious all week. So anxious that my sleep has turned against me. Night after night, the dreams come heavy, thick with symbols I don’t want to interpret.

In one nightmare, I’m killed — murdered — though somehow not dead. I awaken inside the dream, telling myself I’m not gone, and the confusion clings to me even after I open my eyes. In another, I’m with my childhood friend Shirley. We’ve been summoned to fix something down a cliff by a river that looks more like an ocean. The water swells into the shape of a humpback whale, rising and rising until the whole basin floods. The dark water climbs over my body, cold and merciless, echoing the tightness in my chest. Shirley is swept away, and I call for her, but she’s nowhere. I float upward, climbing the cliff, thinking suddenly of my classmate Pam Lewis — as if my mind is stitching old memories into new fear. I am kissing her.

Then the scene shifts again. I’m on a street with a handsome stranger, both of us intoxicated. I recognize him but have forgotten his name. His hands are everywhere. Children pass by, and I worry they’ll see us, but he doesn’t care. We tumble down the steps, and I try to shield us from their eyes, but I can’t. Eventually I stop caring who sees. Shame dissolves into something else — something raw, exposed, almost liberating. Suddenly I couldn’t care less if they were children; honestly, they had no business looking in the first place.
 
But the truth is, Joaquin’s problems seep into my own. His burdens slide under my skin, and I wish they didn’t. Every time he asks for help, I feel torn between compassion and exhaustion. How many times can someone be homeless. How many times can “just one night” turn into two. His needs can almost overshadow my ability to breathe, but I refuse to let them.
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And the hardest truth is this: as much as I care for him — as a friend, as someone who feels like the light-skin son with straight black hair I somehow inherited without ever having to mate — a role I never asked for, but one life keeps assigning me anyway — he is not the one I want beside me for eternity. That place in my life, in my spirit, belongs to someone else entirely.