Louise Heller

Dagny has art shows this summer—multiple—to showcase their beautiful work in Seattle while they’re there for a few months. Still, when we call, I hear about how she took Slinger to the roof to poop at 4:55 am this morning, and had to investigate the building’s garbage shoot, and about the gay horror porno she saw yesterday with Joe, these small details being more relevant to our weekly calls, sometimes, than the big Goods and big Bads of our lives. This week, she is in her studio, fluorescently lit and grinning at me as though she has been waiting all day for this. Some of her work is up on the wall behind her, a sea of blues and creams and browns, Bojagi, gauze and chiffon, pages from journals torn out. She admits to me that she is looking at the small image of herself on her screen with a rising sense of self loathing, signaling to her that it’s time to cut her bangs.

Tonight the thunderstorm sounds at first like a garbage can being rolled to the curb. It is only when it goes on too long, tumbling and grumbling, that Kaelan and I realize it might be thunder. We open the curtains so we can see the flashes from the bed and sit up, watching, making a sound after each one.

The things we want are often the same. To make the rosemary potato pizza. To top with balsamic glaze. To lay awake together for a few minutes without speaking. Sometimes, it becomes hard to parse out my own wants from Kaelan’s. I have a history with that sort of thing, years of un-wanting and of hollowing myself out, in service, ultimately, to no one. I’ve given up my old ways, for the most part, favoring the rush of honesty over the comfort of self-denial. We’re in the kitchen, her hands on my back. We’ve grabbed each other to spin, for a moment, to Carole King. I’ve just finished chopping the onions, and we can’t decide whether or not to move to Boston.

Janet and I walk through Edgerton Park, and the whole time we can hear Shakespeare in the Park performers rehearsing boisterously in the distance. Making our way through the community gardens, all the watering cans are turned upside down on top of poles, in what is probably just a policy to prevent standing water, but reads to me as some sort of sign, signal, or communication. I point out a beautiful bug and Janet says “actually, that’s a lantern fly and we should kill it,” an apology on her face. She leads the way to a second small park, which has a big hill overgrown with tall grasses, and a spiraling path to the top mown into it. At the top, there is a bench to stand on and take in the surroundings, and on the way up is a dead robin. We place yellow flowers all around it and I take a picture to send to Rachel. We wonder aloud what happened to it, looking at the pattern of shed feathers and the indents in the grass, playing bird detectives. 

Laying beside Kaelan in the hammock, I point out the pair of ducks making a slow, glimmering path through the water on our side of the lake, cutting blue from green in the hillside reflection. It’s true, neither of us can see a pair of animals in the wild and not project our own loving onto them, saying that’s so us or look, it’s me and you! We might see a duo of squirrels, perched together, or a Northern Cardinal pair– one bright red and the other orange brown, both vibrant against new snow. On a walk along the trolley trail, she points out a long necked white shore bird and asks who’s that? I surprise myself with an answer, the bird’s name appearing in my mind almost before I can search for it, tossed to the forefront in some primal, intergenerational thread of bird knowledge, something I gleaned from my father or grandmother. Snowy egret? I guess, and I am right. 

Writing at my desk, I search for a sweeter way to say each day I am so lonely, bored, so full of indecision and regret. Staring down the line at choices I’ll make in life that may cause it all to go wrong. Staring too, at spotted lanternflies on the tree outside my window, how they cluster at the base of a branching limb, plotting and scheming, but I must admit again that they are very beautiful. I watch a racoon investigate the “mosquito bucket,” full of debris, rotting fruit, hose water, and a chunk of bug poison, that Kaelan fashioned the other day—the kind of thing that if not done right, will backfire majorly, creating the perfect breeding ground for thousands of mosquito babies. 

Marlene has been getting into making baskets, after attending several queer basket weaving meetups—which yes, sounds like a satire of a Philadelphia event—so I will, on occasion, receive texts like the one I received a few days ago, which read “basket weaving in the bath!” with an accompanying photo. The photo was of a half finished basket, a little sudsy, between their pale wet calves, the lighting warm and dim with a few candles on the edge of the tub. This hobby and its meetups add to the growing list of activities (see: butchfemme picnic, or Dyke march with the lesbians from the grad student union, etc) that make up Marlene’s gayest summer yet. 

My psychiatrist has just moved houses and is in the process of unpacking, and on our video call it looks as if she’s drinking wine out of a Christmas glass. She interrupts herself to laugh at this, saying she just saw herself and realized. It’s hibiscus juice, she tells me, and it is from a Christmas glass—holly leaves and snowflakes.

In June, we discover fireflies in our own backyard, and sit close together at our table to look out the kitchen window as they dive in and out of the garden.

I find in my orange journal: is this a life? Something stuck in my throat? Something lodged in there, something I am unwilling to give up? Some new hope stuck coming up, or some new truth stuck going down? I swallow hours alone, adderall, prozac, a meal replacement drink, a single tear from Kaelan’s yawn, licked off her cheek. I check my phone to see Kathleen has texted me, telling me that she’s made three of her friends read the poem that I sent her, because she loves it so much.

Janet comes over for dinner, though because of the broken jaw, dinner, for her, is more of a series of beverages. We make lentil soup and blend it up with the immersion blender until it’s creamy, and I almost become jealous of her blended version. Janet comes with her own cloth napkin, a green gingham one that we found together at a goodwill the prior week. She also brings over a protein shake: strawberry flavored and in a can, that we decide looks alcoholic, or like an energy drink.

Across the street, I see Kaelan’s two braids down her back, the new blonde streaks woven all the way through. We’ve pulled up to our home at the same time—I look up and am startled by her grinning at me, hair shining in the early evening sun. We spend too long deciding what to have for dinner, feet tangled together on opposite sides of the couch. We debate a walk to the store, then debate how to avoid that. We land on tofu satay, which we cook while I text Ames about their top surgery results. While stirring the onions and cabbage, I get a picture—my first glimpse of their new bare chest, the birds under their collar bones colliding above fresh, clean scars. I find myself wishing I was on the west coast, cooking for them, arriving on their doorstep with peanut sauce and cloth napkins.

Mason texts that he finally got my birthday card from weeks ago and thanks me for the zines, saying that they remind him of Lynda Barry’s work—the drawings with the writing, and the humor. He’s always encouraging me this way and asking if I’ve considered art school, telling me I should go to Parsons, things like that, so dad-like in his unhalting belief in me. He sends a picture of his own sketches of Colville and I love them, I always love his art. It reminds me of Lopez and cold spring mornings, warm summer evenings, walks along the cliffs. The rope swing. 

The tall stump in the yard, which stands at least double my height, is now covered with greenery—vines in a tangle all over and a few sprouts coming from the top of it. The Fritos bag trapped in the fence is made redder and yellower by all the new verdant green. Today, in the rain, I smell dirt and fast growing things when I step outside. The tree by the car continues to drop its blossoms. 

Kaelan and I pull a u-turn to stop in at the Seymour Historical Society art market. The woman behind the table full of checkered handkerchiefs asks me “for a dog, I assume?” as I am browsing (for myself) and I’m not sure what to say. We somehow keep from laughing until we are walking away towards the decorative wreaths. Browsing the antique barn, I begin wishing I was a furniture restoration dyke, who knew how to use a sander. 

Ames has been working a lot in the new studio since their grand opening. I see their pictures of a table covered in heart shaped boxes and jars, waiting to be put into the kiln. When I finally get to visit, I open their studio fridge to a wall of sparkling waters. I’m told to help myself, aside from the Topo Chicos, which of course are Lane’s. We take a walk out back of the studio along the disused train tracks, picking wild blackberries and sweet peas. I tuck a bright pink bloom into the carabiner sitting at their hip, and take a picture of them with the colorful graffiti. 

My phone shows me a picture of this time last year, Dagny and I at the breakfast table, both in our favorite author fan-shirts, Austen and Baldwin, and I remember how that morning, though we’d gotten up together in our shared hotel room, giggling and gossiping and intimate in a way we hadn’t been since we’d lived together years earlier, getting dressed side by side, we didn’t realize we were matching until finishing up breakfast at the ranch, getting up to clean our plates, and exclaiming at the sight of the others’ shirt, both agreeing that we had to take a picture. 

It’s August, and, smelling tomatoes strongly on my fingers, having pinched small shoots from the crook of the plant’s stem to encourage it to produce fruit, I remember myself a few months ago, in doubt that I would really build a garden, hopeful but not yet trusting in myself to follow through. Now, I sit in the sun by my raised bed, replacing the Cosmos dug up by the squirrels. We’ve been in a standoff. They dig, I replant, they dig again, I replant again.

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