wednesdays

It's a [[Wednesday]] when you break up with Al-Haitham.

Nothing happens on Wednesdays. Nothing important, anyway. You didn't even know you would break up with him this morning. You didn't wake up and think, today, I am going to break up with Al-Haitham. Nobody told you. Wouldn't that have been imperative to know? You stand outside your apartment complex, and the wind that hits your cheeks knows many faces but remembers none of them. It's only then that you realize your skin is wet. It stings with cold. It’s that weird in-between time from summer to autumn where it’s blisteringly hot in the morning and then weirdly chilly as soon as the sun hits the ground and runs. There’s this nebulous time between afternoon and evening when the two colors haven’t quite finished seeping into each other and you are caught between the uneven stripes and blood clottage. It’s not easy to put the time into a slot that fits, rounded at the edges and sharp in the teeth. It’s like Wednesday, just a little before or past the middle like a rope being pulled taut from both sides and never quite settling over the mark. You are unsettled. You feel like a Wednesday [[right now.]]

[[one]] You're not accustomed to leaving things incomplete. You like following through with plans and making good on your promises and making sure that forever means forever. You thought that he was forever. You still think that, actually. So it doesn’t make much sense to you that you're here, freshly broken up with (or more accurately, breaker upper). As if you were a Jenga tower, tall and looming, and you had gone ahead and pulled a block from the bottom, the base, and pretended to be surprised when it all came toppling down. [[two]] You are afraid. And you think that sometimes fear is on par with a 7.9 magnitude earthquake. [[three]] You are in love with Al-Haitham. You're pretty sure that’s a forever thing. [after 1 second] [[Forever?]]

*then, a wednesday in july* There are Christmas lights on the walls. It is July. You two don’t celebrate Christmas. You: It's July. Al-Haitham: Congratulations on being able to read the calendar. I figured that out a while ago. Like twenty years ago. You: I don’t celebrate Christmas. You don’t celebrate Christmas. The other day, you asked me if Jesus Christ and God were actually the same person or if people were lying to you. Al-Haitham: They were cheaper than nightlights. As if that makes any sense. You: Nightlights. Al-Haitham: Because you get up in the middle of the night every night to get a glass of water from the kitchen at three a.m. I assume you don’t turn on the lights to avoid waking me up, but last night you stubbed your toe you swore so loud the neighbors two doors down heard. You: Wait, did they tell you that? There’s a fire burning so intensely in the pit of your stomach that it threatens to swallow everything. Flames welling up your throat. Christmas in July. Strings of lights in the hallway so that you will never have to stub your toe at unhinged times in the morning again. [[right now.]]

*then, a wednesday spent predicting the future* You pulled out three tarot cards at random, not expecting to be met with dread sinking to the pit of your stomach. Dehya: Oh boy. The lovers. Doesn’t that bode well for you two? Unless you’re scared of the stability of your union. You: It’s reversed. Even I know that’s not a good thing. Look, I just did a search on my phone and it says we’re doomed. You look up the remaining cards, one of a man dangling from one leg by a cross and the other of some circle of sorts. You: My phone is telling me that this one represents sacrifice. And this other one is the Wheel of Fortune. Have I ever told you that I hate the word fate? Dehya: It’s impressive the lengths you go to in order to turn every stroke of luck into a misfortune. Have you ever heard of catastrophizing? Or self-sabotage? You: I’m not catastrophizing. I’m exploring all of the possibilities. Dehya: That's what an overthinker would say. [[right now.]]

*then, a random wednesday morning* One of his coworkers gave him magnet poetry for his birthday, and now it sits in eternal prayer on your fridge. At first, you didn't think he would really take to it, but he spends every morning spelling out notes on the fridge over a cup of coffee. Sometimes he will leave you notes on the fridge, things like *coffee later* or *wait for me.* On your birthday, the expanse of the canvas is cleared except for the words *celebrating you.* You think that you and him are like magnets, like poetry. You could separate from each other if you wanted to, but you prefer to stay within sticking distance, not glued, but firmly attached. [[right now.]]

You stand in the alcohol section of the grocery store and consider buying a bottle of cheap wine to get drunk, but that’s too stereotypically melancholic for you. And getting wasted is a Friday thing, not a Wednesday thing. Buying an entire frozen macaroni and cheese and eating it by yourself would probably have the same effect with the added bonus of redirecting the damage from your liver to your arteries. You really, seriously contemplate it for a little bit before you realize that you don't’t have an oven to heat it up in. That oven is his, in an apartment that has both of your names written on the lease, but since you were the one to leave first, you conceded rights to the apartment. At least, that’s how it works in your head. [[You give up and exit the grocery store.]] [[You decide to get drunk anyway.]]

Things That You Must Learn To Distinguish From Al-Haitham: A Cumulative List mornings nights sunsets on the top of your apartment roof the pot of basil on the balcony dappled sunlight through the blinds the pretentious coffee machine he bought that one time he was on an espresso kick mango sticky rice any grocery list that includes dark brown sugar for undisclosed reasons circles magnet poetry the entire fucking city Christmas lights July August [[September—->something]]

It’s less so afternoon than it is evening now, though it’s still an indecisive sort of mix. The sun is starting to make up its mind. It slips slowly down past the line of trees and the buildings in the distance, golden yellow egg yolk peeking through the cracks of industrial buildings and offices and apartment complexes and the cracked brick edge of the grocery store. You [[can’t go home,]] and you can’t eat an entire macaroni and cheese in one sitting without an oven.

You end up at this shitty little hole in the wall that serves Thai food and a mean mango sticky rice during the summer. The restaurant is one that you and Al-Haitham like to frequent for takeout, not dine-in, so you can enjoy each other’s company in the privacy of your own apartment. It’s a shame, really, that every little part of this city has been stained so irrevocably by him. You order… [[something]] off of the menu.

You would get mango sticky rice, except it’s not summer and you're not with him and you've grown too accustomed to sharing that an entire dish would probably be too much for you, anyway. Sickly sweet. That’s the ugly thing about falling in love—you share so much of yourself; your mornings, your nights, your three am epiphanies and secret chocolate chip cookie recipes and space in your camera roll that by the time you have to pull back, you can’t separate from what is yours and what is theirs. Or you don’t know how to go about making the cut, jagged at the edges even with a steak knife. Either way, you’re stuck with the other still, even if you don’t want it, even if you do. Pieces of him in your digestive tract and stuck between your teeth. It’s only [[mango sticky rice,]] you tell yourself. What comes [[after the sun sets?]]

Fuck fate and fortune cookies and prophecy. None of the cookies you cracked open in your Chinese takeout ever told you this. Who knew that one morning you would wake up with a fear crawling in your throat so devastating that you would take the most precious thing in your life and break it apart with your own hands? Maybe people take the fact that the sun sets and rises every day for granted. You thought you'd see every morning with him. The sun will set soon, but it still won’t be too late for you to be out on the streets because it’s still that undefined time between summer and autumn. If you stay out here, against this city bench facing the park, maybe you can watch the sun make its travels to have peace that you can, too, [[move on.]]

Your friend Tighnari likes to say that you're emotionally repressed. Is it emotional repression to cry into a glass of wine over the scorned bride’s best friend in that one Jollibee wedding commercial, Tighnari? Maybe you just really like fried chicken. Tighnari says yes, yes it is emotional repression because clearly there’s something deeper going on here than chicken of all things that you are resonating with, like the idea of being unable to let go of someone to such an extent that you will watch them seek happiness with someone else entirely, but if you wanted to be psychoanalyzed then you would just go back to tarot cards. Anyway, you show up at his doorstep with a plastic grocery bag of [[zucchini.]]

Tighnari lets you in his apartment so you can escape the bleeding canvas of the sky, the first sunset in a long while that you have seen without Al-Haitham. Tighnari: So. Are you okay, or are you having another episode? You're grating zucchini for chocolate zucchini bread. You: I don’t know what you’re talking about. The way you’re phrasing that is very rude. Tighnari: Alright. Do I need to break out a bottle of wine? You: No, because I'm fine. Tighnari watches you mix the batter, and then jumps up. Tighnari: Christ, don't [[cry->Bingo.]] into the batter.

You're crying all of a sudden. You: I ruin everything all by myself. Tighnari brings you over to the couch. Tighnari: It’s nine pm on a Wednesday, and you showed up to bake in my kitchen instead of your own. Normally this would not be an issue, but we are both gainfully employed, and my bedtime is in an hour. Where’s Al-Haitham? You: It doesn't feel like a Wednesday. [[Nothing happens on Wednesdays.]] You keep saying that. Tighnari: [[So...?]]

You: Al-Haitham fundamentally disagrees with zucchini bread. Especially the chocolate kind. He says that it’s misleading, and it doesn’t even have that much zucchini in it, and it makes it worse because it has as much chocolate in it as it does vegetables which makes it categorically wrong. And that bread isn’t the right term for it, since it’s more like a cake. So he thinks it should be called zucchini cake. But you can’t! You can’t just call it one thing because you think it should fit under one stringent definition when really there’s multiple definitions that it falls under. That’s not how it works, not when the rest of the world agrees on one thing. So it’s zucchini bread. Zucchini cake sounds stupid. Tighnari: I'm concerned. He does look concerned. You: You should be. [[Zucchini cake]] is ridiculous.

Tighnari: I meant I was concerned for you, not the state of baked goods. You: But you agree that it’s wrong, right? He never did. He’s so stubborn. But he eats it every time I make it, even though he disagrees with it as a concept. Tighnari: Did he do anything? Say anything? You don't know what to say, and when you do, your voice comes out very quiet. [[Yes.]] [[No.]]

These aren’t bad things, and you know it. They’re just [[overwhelming]] things, in really quiet ways, in the kind of ways that you know Tighnari wouldn’t understand because he’s never had to stay in the cramped space that is your mind. You just wonder when Al-Haitham is going to get enough of it, is all. When he’ll get tired of eating banana bread every other week.

Tighnari: I think you should talk to him about this. Why don’t we bake the bread, and when it’s done, you go home to him and fix it before it’s already broken? You: Okay. I broke up with him, though. Tighnari freezes. It's a very comical, record scratch movie pause kind of freeze. Tighnari: You what? You: That’s, like, a Friday thing, not a Wednesday event. It’s been years. He didn’t even protest when I said it, he just had this look on her face. Tighnari: Because it's Al-Haitham. He would go along with anything if he thought it’s what is best for you or if you asked for it. You know this. You: But this isn't anything. It's [[everything.]]

Tighnari: You don’t really think that you’re not [[everything to him too,]] right? I know you don’t. If he thought that you wanted it, then he would accept it, even if it made him unhappy.

And all of sudden you don't want to be here anymore, you want to be back walking the street to your apartment, the one lit by the lowly buzzing street lights at night, with the sidewalk that’s just cracked enough for you to have to watch every tenth step, and you want to fumble for your keys outside the doorstep for long enough that Al-Haitham will take pity on you and open the door himself so that the first thing you see that you associate most directly with home is his face. And you want to throw yourself into his arms and tell him that you're sorry, that you didn’t mean it, that you probably won’t ever mean it, as terrifying and final as it seems, and that for as long as he wants you, [[you will have him.]]

By the time you are half-walking, half-jogging down the street back to him, it’s already a little past eleven. The sun has set now, finally content, and the night blankets the sky with twinkling stars as if someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked it back with their thumb all above them. The bread is still warm in your hands, almost overly so; you’d almost forgotten it in your haste before Tighnari pushed it into your arms with a smile and a bid of good luck. And now you're a little [[scared.]]

The door swings open, and five seconds later, he appears. [[You smile weakly.]] [[You run.]]

You turn before you know what your body is doing, and that stupid, selfish fear snaps between your ears like everything breaking all at once, and you've never been so afraid. You only love that which you are capable of losing. [[It would save you both to leave for good.]] [[Weren't you fighting for something?]]

You: Hi. Al-Haitham: Hello. [[You wonder if he will hear you out.]] [[You wonder if he will slam the door.]]

Except for [[this.->Bingo.]]

Alcohol doesn't do anything to you while you're in this state, or if it does, you don't feel it at all, so you stumble around while melancholy pulls a taut string through the city and stays in its dry and hollow chest, coiling around the slow and steady heartbeat that hovers just below the resting pulse. [[Everything reminds you of him.->reminder]] Like the Thai place you always got takeout from. [[Where do you go]] when the world slams shut around you?

No. You: He’s just so… [[good.]] In all of the ways you wouldn’t expect. Like the way he got blinds for the bedroom because he knows I like to sleep in on the weekends even though he prefers waking up with the sun. And the time he spent three weeks trying to learn latte art for me so we could stop throwing away money at the nearest coffee shop. And the Christmas lights. Chocolate zucchini bread. He hates banana bread, too, for the same reasons as zucchini bread, but we keep letting our bananas get really brown so we always end up making some, and he’ll eat it.

Yes. What was Al-Haitham thinking, falling in love with somebody like you? A heart, pruned and wrinkled? It's hard to take a thing like that. He should have known this would happen. Did he do anything? [[Yes.->known]] [[No.->No.]]

Yes. People aren't allowed to give themselves over to other people like that. It's just not right. Besides, how could he expect you to hold the enormity of his love? Your hands can only stretch so wide. Did he do anything? [[Yes, because you love him.->well]] [[No, because you love him.->No.]]

Yes. You love him more than you thought yourself capable of. How could you run from yourself when he's hanging onto your hand? The heart is only a liability; it pumps blood and delivers oxygen and makes fools of us. You can't love him into being forgiven. You don't get to keep two good things at once. You love him. How terrifying. [[It's not his fault.->No.]]

His face folds, and the door begins to close, but you've already decided that this is worth fighting for. You won't let something stupid like a [[door->You wonder if he will hear you out.]] get in between you two.

You catch onto the door, the compass beating in your chest tying you down to the linoleum flooring. You: I made chocolate zucchini bread. He looks confused. You: At Tighnari's. Because after I—you know, said the thing, I didn’t really know what to do. So I returned to what I’m used to, which happens to be chocolate zucchini bread. Because I’ll never get sick of it, no matter how many times I make it. Things like that are important, you know? Like… bread. Or that one really old Asian lady at the hairdressers that you like to cut your hair. And that one book on Old Romantic language that you like. He still isn't saying anything. You: I went to that Thai place. The one we always get takeout from. Habit, I guess, even though we both know I don’t like going there myself. I don’t know why I expected that anything would change even if the world had tilted on its axis, the way it did. Or like the zucchinis! I didn’t know what I was doing, and I barely remember actually going to the store again, but I came out with vegetables so I just went to Tighnari’s. Al-Haitham: Wait. Is your zucchini… thing… a [[metaphor?]]

You: Yes! It is! Because when I’m lost or afraid or anxious or whatever, I return back to… you, is what I’m trying to say. I guess. And I had to have been really, really stupid to ever think that I could go without you. He's still just staring at you, but you realize that you're not the only one who's scared. You're both in uncharted territory, working off a key and a measurement system that neither of you are fluent in. Al-Haitham: But [[why?]]

You: Oh. You swallow. You: It's because everything you do terrifies me. You: I didn't know when you would reach your limit, so I ended it for you. You: I love you so much I don't know what to do with it. How much longer you can take it. You: It's so difficult being loved. You: Nobody talks about how terrible it can be [[to be loved.]]

[[. . .]]

Al-Haitham: Love? You think I have that figured out? You think back to mornings watching him by the fridge, taking apart and putting back together small declarations of love as if trying on different shoes, experimenting and experimenting and experimenting. You think of stringing Christmas lights in the hallways in the thick of summer. Him: I thought we would figure that out [[together.]]

Together. You've forgotten the meaning of that word amidst the wild blindness of self-hatred. You've forgotten the stretch of mercy over your skin. You: I'm sorry. I don't always remember that I'm not alone. Al-Haitham: I'll [[wait.]]

You: I'm sorry. You're crying. Al-Haitham: I know. He doesn't say empty, placating things like it’s fine, because it’s not fine, and they both know it. But they’ll talk about that later. They’ll work through it later. Al-Haitham: I understand. Al-Haitham: I wouldn't have given up on you that easily. Al-Haitham: Don't you know that every star in the sky reminds me of you? I wouldn't have been able to escape you. Al-Haitham: I'm scared, too. Al-Haitham: It's alright to be afraid. [[What more could you ask for?]]

You have this theory that nothing important ever happens on Wednesdays—and you have an entire lifetime of mundane, boring Wednesdays to back this hypothesis up. There’s only one instance that edges the line on betraying this speculation; but even on that day, everything that was broken is neatly fixed before the clock strikes midnight, so clearly your conjecture still rings true. Which is not to say that nothing happens on Wednesdays, just that it’s nothing of note. Plenty of things happen on Wednesdays—you walk by the newspaper kiosk on the corner to pick up the daily edition, you indulge in matcha instead of the usual coffee in the morning, and you're in love, love, love.

[[You're wrong.->Weren't you fighting for something?]]

[[You turn. The door is still open, and there he is, waiting to be repossessed.->You wonder if he will hear you out.]]

Tighnari lets you in his apartment so you can escape the bleeding canvas of the sky, the first sunset in a long while that you have seen without Al-Haitham. Tighnari: So. Are you okay, or are you having another episode? You're grating zucchini for chocolate zucchini bread. You: I don’t know what you’re talking about. The way you’re phrasing that is very rude. Tighnari: Alright. Do I need to break out a bottle of wine? You: No, because I'm fine. And you already had one. Tighnari watches you mix the batter, and then jumps up. Tighnari: Christ, don't [[cry->Bingo.]] into the batter.

[[Forgiveness.]] [[A kinder Wednesday evening.]] [[Nothing.]]

[[What do you even have to be forgiven for? Survival? Don't be stupid.->Nothing.]]

[[He still loves you. Is there any better mercy than that?->Nothing.]]

[[. . .->x]]