as you pick a kernel from between your teeth and watch the man you love read the instructions off a soup can, there are a lot of ways you're feeling. the articulation is the hardest part. snapping them in line with semantics. trying to put what feels like chapters to the ache. words and constructs, followed by more words and more constructs. then those tedious words meant to reinforce the title you've committed your emotions to. but the truth is... in that moment you're feeling everything and anything at once. like there's a part of you, gaping. open. where the little things escape. like when seahorses give birth. bursts of small wiggling forms. thousands of them, cast out into water. does the seahorse name every single sentient emission? can only he tell them apart? you know you feel sadness. shock. denial. anger. everything that comes from grief, loss.
when you lost your older brother, one of the hardest things to come to terms with, aside from the anguish of loss, was the dissolution of some aspect of your identity. words that loom above you, captions and chapters of the book written about your life. edited. erased. revised. who are you when you're not your favorite person's 'lil bro'? when you relinquish a title, do you seek to refill it with something else? in place of brother, comes "father". in place of fiance, comes partner. and you are resigned to accept that the wedding is indefinitely called off this time. it isn't the first time, but with every reassigned role, comes a new series of promises. he tells you this isn't a cancellation, but a re-visitation... he sets the soup can down. settles instead on sitting with you on the couch. you're limp, vacant. and he's running his thin fingers through your hair. but all you can think about is that you really wanted that wedding. really wanted that italian wedding soup in the can, left sitting somewhere distant on the counter. and you can't even begin to phantom that you don't remember who you are in the absence of that marker of your identity: fiance.
L, WILLIAMSBURG
you see her in the middle of the night. the train stalls, takes a while. why didn't you just take a lyft? fuck uber. you sway side to side in the train that won't leave the station. stagnant and humid. someone throws up between the cars. their retching and the smell comes towards you, greets you happily, arms wide open. you jog out of the door, up the stairs, hail a cab. been a while since you took this kind of taxi. the man is making eyes at you through the mirror, trying to size you up. he takes you to her apartment. her distress is apparent. and when you hug her, you lift her up, off her feet. how easily her small frame surrenders to yours. but that's the only part of her that'll ever submit to you. and isn't it new? to meet someone who won't recoil. when you hold her in bed, like a stone trying to weigh down one of those paper cranes she loves to make, you try to find the hints of how she's really feeling. who she is today. in the way that you cling so desperately to your identity, your masculinity, your ethos. she is less concerned of hers. she tries to bend the schematics of her captions between her fingers, like a kneading eraser. excess lines are rubbed away so cleanly if they fail to fit the portrait she's drawn of herself that day. you touch her skin, you touch her hair. whoever, whatever, she is today. she's yours. and you struggle to articulate, as cleanly as possible, that you're hers. in whatever way she'd allow it.
you submit.
B, KING'S HIGHWAY
nervous as fuck. that's right. just like the first day, if not worse. now that your tenure of paternity leave's expired, you're wearing the uniform again. strapped. mentally prepared and highly caffeinated to take on the night. a redbull on the way. a cup of hot black when you're walking through the precinct doors. shaking everyone's hand. singing in that rookie baritone about how glad you are to be back, to find your form and function through the gleam of your badge. but it's a damn slow night. slower than you wanted. deep down, you wanted to feel that adrenaline, wanted to run and feel your chest tighten as your throat burned. you wanted to run, slam, shove and watch a miscreant yield to your authority. but instead, lots of paper work, filling up some reports on that stupid app. lots of coffee, lots of sneaking looks at your phone, lots of little videos of your daughters throughout the night. lots of little "c'mere, look at this shit," to your partner, as she leans in and squints at your phonescreen. what a bust of a fucking shift. leaves you with those heavy thoughts. if only those thoughts could yield to your authority. like those self-help books that promise to teach you how to gain mastery over your emotions. does anyone really have mastery over those things? or is it something people like to sell? you leave to the gym after your shift. consider the idea of mastery as an illusion, a way to discredit the complexity of identity. you lift heavier than your usual threshold, you burn.
G, COBBLE HILL
who knew how quickly babies grow? you see it easier than you see yourself age. you promised yourself that every night you'd measure her limbs, you'd count every strand on both their heads. you'd catch every spurt of growth the way the seahorse names every foal. but of course, you won't. it's only the poetics of young fatherhood making you manic. when you and your partner slow dance with two babies between you, the laughter is infectious. this is your home in cobble hill, brooklyn. the home you want your children to grow up in. the floors you'll watch them open gifts on, the floors you'll watch them do their homework on, the floors you'll watch them walk on for the last time before they move out on their own. you often think of how nice it would be to have all your partners there together. in that big house, on those wide floors. though, you too considered, in your grief, to get your own space, your own apartment. you also considered, in your bartering, to spilt yourself between two homes. his and his. all yours. like a man with two separate families. two different identities, two different cities. was it so wrong? a lot of children split their life between two homes. parents divorce, remarry. why couldn't you do it? why couldn't you have both lives? but the choice was made for you, it seemed. your two lovers having hearty conversations into the night about what your future would actually look like versus the dreams you had of it. and it's hard not to feel betrayed by it. when you think you'd never sit and decipher your partner's future with his other partners. you feel invaded. but you realize there's nothing left for you to do but surrender to idea that you, yourself, opened your life to network of criticism and opinion. open source. you don't even have a passcode on your phone anymore. anyone picks it up, looks through it. but what matters is that you are baba, or ghehewfffgghhfff fffftt, depending on the baby. and schematics have no place, the words don't exist to describe who you are in their mind. but you know it's the one marker of your identity nothing can take revoke, edit, or discredit. your partner sets your younger down for a change. you tell him you're on duty. here so he can do what he needs to now that you're home.