By Callie Zucker
dear lehna,
I’m the one who sits four seats down from you in lecture; couldn’t help but notice you today. we met eyes for a second until you broke the contact. come make dinner at my apartment tonight?
xo,
greta
She came this morning and took everything. I scour the apartment, looking for something that might still smell like her or have her tiny script on it. She took her IKEA hamper, even though I still had clothes in it. I open the fridge, hoping for a half-drunk bottle of water that still had the touch of her lips on it. She took everything she bought, including the Heinz ketchup. She doesn’t even like ketchup. I look under the bed, in the bins on the top shelf of the closet, but she has suddenly become an invisible presence in the house we had called home. I find small comfort in the bathroom, the only place in our apartment where she failed to scrub her existence from tangible memory. There’s an old prescription bottle in the back of the cabinet under the sink; I smooth my thumb over her name on the orange container.
“Okay,” I try speaking out loud for the first time all day. “Let’s do a shower.” I sound stupid. Maybe that’s why she left me. Everything about me is probably why she left me, but I like trying to parse it out myself, figure out the breaking point. It’s easier to think, oh, man, she left me because I did x or y, because my hands are clammy or because I told her that Jake kissed me at the company’s holiday party. She did get mad about the Jake thing, which made laugh, which made her mad, which made me nervous. I remember the fight like it was two weeks ago. Because it was two weeks ago.
“You did what?” she asked, green eyes flaring already.
“He kissed me. While we were leaving, he just grabbed me.” I shrugged.
“Lehna, what? Did you kiss back?” She put her fingers on her temples, brow furrowed like she was thinking hard. I don’t think she was, though.
“Greta, I’m gay,” I told her, like she didn’t already know. “Come on. I love you.” I reached out and she shrunk away from me.
“I know. I know you do. It’s hard standing on the pedestal you put me on.” She sighed at me. I looked at her expectantly. I knew she loved me, I thought she did, but she didn’t give me the satisfaction of the words.
“Greta? You’re for me. It’s how it is, it’s no pedestal,” I began, but before I could continue she stood up and stormed out the door like the tsunami she is. She came back an hour later with a bag of limes, mint, soda water and a smile and said, “Mojitos night!” I figured she was over it.
I think she really was over it. I can’t think of an event that would catalyze her departure, which just confirms the worst. She didn’t leave because I did something she didn’t like, she left because I am something she didn’t like.
—
dear lehna,
I had so much fun last night, staying up with you just talking until the sun came up. I didn’t go to sleep until three the next day. still thinking about your lips. see you on Monday.
xo,
greta
“Well, honestly, it’s better that she’s gone,” Cara tells me over brunch. I am eating a hardboiled egg because I don’t deserve better.
“Parts of the apartment still kind of smell like her, if I really stick my nose in them.” I’m not listening to Cara.
“I don’t know how you stayed with her so long. She was insufferable, Lehna. She was awful. She had a Smiths tattoo on her ribcage, for Christ’s sake!” Cara is right, she did have a Smiths tattoo. She loved Morrissey.
“I’ve got the twenty first century breathing down my neck,” I whisper, remembering how it felt to brush my fingers over the smooth ridges of her ribs, kissing the first letter of every word.
“That’s a ridiculous quote! I’m sorry, am I going crazy? How is that a good lyric? It’s not even a good Smiths song.” I’m still not listening. “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” is echoing in my head. Cara’s right; it isn’t a good song. I don’t care.
Cara’s poached egg bleeds all over her toast, the charred rye absorbing the yellow like a sponge. I wonder if the yolk could be taken out of the toast, if the toast could become bread again, if the bread could become yeast and flour and salt and water. Cara watches me mope silently, the pity in her eyes equally comforting and invasive.
“I mean, were you guys ever really that happy?” Cara probes. I look up sharply.
“I’ve never been happier in my entire life. You don’t get it, you’ve never been in love, not like this. She wasn’t just beautiful, she was enchanting, she was… she was Greta, that’s what she was.” I don’t want to snap at Cara, but her words are fingers in my two-week-old wound.
“Well, yeah, she was enchanting. That’s the point, Lehna. She, like… beguiled you.” Cara keeps trying. She’s a good friend, the exact kind you don’t want at a time like this. Logic and heartbreak don’t fit in the same puzzle.
“I don’t need your grand theories about my relationship, thanks.”
Cara raises her eyebrows but drops the subject. She starts talking about an upcoming writer’s event that she wants me to come to, but her words are drowned out by my wailing thoughts. I’m thinking about enchanting forests and happy endings, and how my fairy tale has suddenly turned into a once-upon-a-time.
—
dear lehna,
I saw this persimmon tree on my walk home so I picked you a few. I remember you said that persimmons taste like sunshine and honey and I want you to eat them and think about me like I’m sunshine and honey.
xo,
greta
The morning she left Greta held a mug of chamomile tea with both her hands and calmly informed me that she was leaving. At first I thought she meant the house, so I told her it was a Saturday and she didn’t have to go to work, silly. She was quick to correct herself: she was leaving me.
“I just don’t love you, Lehna. I don’t know why I was trying to convince myself that I did. What I’ve figured out, what Britt has helped me figure out, is that I was searching for someone who had the same baggage as me instead of finding someone to carry it for me.”
She told me this with an air of finality. Britt was the new girlfriend, but I didn’t even know I was the ex-girlfriend yet. In the back of my mind I registered how bad Britt’s advice was, because putting all your shit on someone else isn’t the recipe for a healthy relationship. Britt writes poetry, though, so it makes sense that she’d give shitty advice. Poets are more dedicated to metaphor than sensibility.
I tried to work with this stupid metaphor despite myself. “Gret, just because we have the same baggage,” (we don’t, first of all), “doesn’t mean I can’t carry yours for you.” I reached my hand across our little two-person dining table. Her fingernails were painted dark green.
“I should’ve known you’d be difficult about this.” She sighed and looked down. “My horoscope told me to look out for people trying to prevent me from making progress.”
“What did mine say? Not to let go of the ones that I love?”
She gave me a pained look and mutters, “You are so textbook Pisces it’s actually ridiculous sometimes.”
I considered asking which fabled astrology textbook she was so keen to fit me inside, but it was not the time nor place, and would also probably seem ‘textbook Pisces’ to her. “This just seems very sudden to me, Gret,” I started, words balling up in my mouth. “I love you and I think that you love me. I get that sometimes things are confusing and maybe we forget along the way how we feel but we’re for each other, we’ve said it time and again and it’s true!” I was fumbling my words and she saw the opportunity to interrupt.
“If you noticed anything at all you’d know it’s not sudden, at least not to me. I’m sorry you feel that way. But I can’t hold on for your sake.”
My stomach tied itself into eight different sailor’s knots; this was not just another fight. “It’s like, in Wuthering Heights! With Catherine and Heathcliff, that quote, the… we’re made of the same soul stuff, Greta.” I tried so hard not to cry but it was a moot point. I cried. She was uncomfortable, but leaned forward to gently touch my hand.
“Lehna, that’s a novel. This is real life.”
“I will do anything to make you stay. Anything you want. What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything.”
Greta told me she thought she had a star inside of her, her energy, her something. Greta told me that I was killing her star, that I would make her a supernova and eventually a black hole. Greta told me she was leaving me, it was final. Her phone started buzzing on the table. It was Britt. Britt’s new poetry collection was just published by an independent publishing company in Chicago. It’s called while I was saying it I wished that I weren’t. That night when I ordered it online, I laughed because maybe if she wished she hadn’t said it, she wouldn’t have published an entire goddamned book of it. I laughed so hard I choked, and kept laughing until I could cry.
—
dear lehna,
happiest halloween morning! I’ll be back by six or seven, the show might go late but I’ll try my best to make it. remember to get candy just in case the hansens’ kids knock—they’re so precious I could cry. makes you wonder about someday, doesn’t it?
xo,
greta
Today I will not change out of my sweatpants or wash my hair or really do anything. Cara calls to check in and tell me to eat. This is her love language. When Greta left, Britt came to pick her up on her motorcycle. I hate Britt because she’s a cooler queer than me. She has tattoos her friends gave her of daggers on her thighs and carnivorous plants on her biceps. She’s tall and thin and model-like in her sexy androgyny. Britt is the kind of edgy but non-threatening queer magazines do features on to seem modern and politically aware. Britt spent a year in Berlin; she got into Berghain every time with no problems at all. I also hate Britt because she stole my girlfriend, but I figure that goes without saying. Somewhere in the back of my mind, or maybe the front of my mind, or really all over my mind, I wonder if Greta loves Britt because of these things that I am not. I am not the right kind of woman for her. Greta wants the flash and fire of
long nights out and Viceroys at six a.m., not Joni Mitchell albums and clean sheets. Maybe I have it all wrong, maybe I’m using the old model of Appropriate Gayness. I forgot to update my operating system. I bet Britt has no bedframe, I bet Britt’s mattress just sits on the ground. I love bedframes, I think as I lie on the bed, thoroughly above it all.
Greta’s left evidence of her existence in the bathroom. Half-empty bottles of travel shampoo and conditioner, lipsticks she didn’t wear. I pick up an old comb of hers and stare at the bright blonde strands dangling from the plastic rectangle. I consider eating one strand. Love makes us do crazy things. I do not eat a strand, but because Cara told me to eat, I eat eleven apple sauce cups and then sit on my bed and listen to Greta’s records. Greta says she listens to vinyl because it makes listening to music more special, more of an event. I think it’s kind of stupid but I bought her records anyway; new artists she loved and then records I found at the flea market. Once, I found her the British version of the Beach Boys’ single “God Only Knows,” where it’s the A-side and not the B-side. She said this was the best thing I had ever done for her. The best thing Greta ever did for me was love me, I think. If she actually did.
Greta’s shampoo smells like coconut; she said she needed special shampoo for curl definition, so I bought it for her. She left it behind, so I squeeze the viscous liquid into my hand and slather it into my hair even though she hates when I use it; the smell is comforting. Suds multiply underneath my massaging fingers and I scratch my head over and over again until I feel clean. Through the glass of the shower door I see my body, alone. I remember the showers we took together when we first moved into the apartment, hot water glistening on her skin and kissing her collarbone and the soft underneath of her bicep down to her fingertips. We would get out of the shower and shivering, dripping, wrap towels around one another and sit next to the window and decide what we would plant in the garden we did not have.
In the mornings, when I left before her, she would stretch her arms out to me and arch her back and half-whisper, half-whine, “Don’t leave, stay here and kiss me,” and I’d think in my head about how I didn’t have to stay because there she’d be when I got home. And then there she’d be, when I got home, belly up underneath the dining room table trying to fix the loose leg of a chair.
I get out of the shower and crouch on the bathmat with my towel wrapped around me like a cape. I find that two p.m. is quite possibly the loneliest hour of the day.
—
dear lehna,
when I said I felt like something was missing it didn’t mean that something was big. please try to understand where I’m coming from. I know words can hurt and I’m trying my best to say how I feel. Remember that honesty is important and I wouldn’t say these things if I didn’t care for you. I want to be the person you see in me, for both of our sakes.
xo,
greta
Greta knew definitively that she was gay after her third boyfriend told her, “Greta, maybe you’re gay,” as a joke after he watched her kiss their mutual friend at a high school party on a dare. It had started with that special teenage boy breed of lechery, boys intrigued by women together after their first forays into the lesbian section of Pornhub. Greta, ever impressionable but also led by a voracious curiosity, caved into the boys’ dares and tentatively kissed Ella, a volleyball player four inches taller with a body that Greta had always been drawn to. She’d always figured it was just envy, but when Ella tucked a long black piece of hair behind her ear before they kissed Greta realized envy was not the word for it. Later that night, fifteen-year-old Greta, three beers in, still reeling from the rightness of the kiss, broke up with her boyfriend. He
did not connect the dots. She snuck back into her house, quietly tiptoeing past her parents’ bedroom door. It was the night before the PSAT, and she considered gay everything.
Gay sheets, she thought, stroking the polyester blend.
Gay room, looking into the blue dark of two AM.
Gay lamp, tugging on the chain of her bedside light.
Gay me, as she touched her body in the low yellow light of her room.
—
dear lehna,
I know I’ll only have been gone a few hours by the time you read this, but I miss you so much already that my ventricles may burst open in want for you. three days without you is three days too long, I can’t wait to be back in your arms. my mother called this morning to ask one more time if you could please make it. I’m asking the same in my head but I understand, love.
xo,
greta
I am very drunk. I know this for two reasons. First, because Cara saw me stumble on my way to the dance floor and told me, “Lehna, you’re very drunk,” and also because I’ve had five drinks in the past hour and a half. It’s Friday night, which means “girls’ night,” which means Cara and the others dragged me to a bar so we could all pretend I’ve been functioning for the past two weeks since Greta packed up and left.
Cara is worried about me. She’s trying to meet my eye across the table and when she finally does I try on a winsome smile but find that it looks more like a Novocaine grimace. I consider telling her I’m fine, but this would only solidify the fact that nobody thinks I am fine. Which makes sense, because I’m not. But still. I get up to go to the bathroom, plagued by nausea and a general feeling of regret.
I remember getting drunk with Greta in our last few months at school, when we were first dating and saying we were in love. She was always much better at it than I was, downing drinks like they were diet cola, a thing Greta would never, ever put in her body. She’d spike her health-food smoothies with gin when we went out, she’d wear expensive diamond jewelry with sweatpants, she’d type on her computer while chewing on a pen in her hand.
I loved all of these little things she did, so silly, so entirely her. In the bathroom of the bar, staring at my reflection in the dirty mirror, they begin to feel very stupid. This feels like progress to me, and I promptly throw up in the sink.
Progress.
—
dear lehna,
I’m sorry about last night, I shouldn’t have lashed out about the mindfulness book you gave me. I know you were only trying to help; it’s just that sometimes your love feels like it’s beyond me. we’re both only human. I’ll be home early tonight and we can talk about it more.
xo,
greta
“Don’t look to your right.” Cara tells me. I look to my right, at the woman putting dried fruits in her grocery cart. It’s Britt, sans Greta but still Britt.
“What?” I try to play innocent, like I don’t know who she is. As if I hadn’t bought her book and read every poem and tried to work out which ones were about Greta and when they were written and how long were they together before Greta decided I should be clued in. There was one poem that particularly irked me because I think it was about me. And it was bad, which is frustrating because if I’m going to be written about secretly I would like it to be done well. The entire collection was sort of awful, though. Most of the pages were more blank space than words, the longest poem must have been seventy-five words. I think most of them are about Greta, even the ones about waterfalls or the ones about Britt’s mother or about being gay. The one about me was short and sweet and pitying.
do you notice
her halting touch
is your intimacy still intimate?
you must see her lips,
smell me on her,
but you still refuse to see
what you will not admit is there.
I have no idea why Britt got published. There’s a poem in the book that is literally just the word ‘poem’ in the shape of an infinity sign. The poem that is ostensibly about me is accompanied by a rudimentary drawing of a sink with the faucet on, which probably means something to Britt but means absolutely nothing to me, because I didn’t minor in poetry at Reed College.
I watch Britt pull down the lever on the machine that grinds nuts into butter right in front of you. Almond butter. Greta loves almond butter on whole grain toast with honey drizzled on top. Britt has all of these things in her cart. Cara and I get flats of blueberries and enormous mangoes and I pretend that I am unfazed as we go through self-checkout. At home I eat the mango and suck on the flat pit, watching Britt’s poetry book burn in the fireplace.
—
dear lehna,
hope you have a wonderful day off my love, I’m probably going to be very late tonight and may just stay over and help brenna set up wedding things. she’s freaking out! I hope we’re never frantic like that.
xo,
greta
The first night we spent together, we spoke over each other, words rushing to liberate themselves from under our tongues.
“Lehna, no! How do you not like strawberries?”
“They’re almost always sour! When they’re not, they’re already mushy.”
“That’s ridiculous, you must’ve never had a good one. Somehow.”
“Well, Gret, I guess you’ll have to show me a good one.”
“Do you want more wine?”
“Can I have more wine?”
We didn’t get more wine. Not until hours later, skin soft from drying sweat. Our socks slid on the wooden floors as we tiptoed into the kitchen, giggling, quiet for the sleeping roommates. Stems full of roses matching the flush of skin where our hands had grabbed hard at each other minutes before. We made a toast.
“Til the end do us part.”
One of us led the other back to the room.
The first night we spent together, I thought I already loved her.
—
dear lehna,
there’s something up with the kitchen sink, I couldn’t figure it out on my own so I called the landlord to call whoever, and someone needs to be here between five and seven but I really really can’t so could you do it please?
greta
Cara has set me up on a date. I told her several times that I would be unpleasant but she insisted that three months of moping was too long so I’m sitting across from this girl, Noor, in this awful coffee shop where you sit on sacks of beans instead of chairs. I drink tea. She’s really beautiful, but I’m distracted. I’m thinking of what Greta would think of this place, if she’s been here before, what she would have ordered. Almond milk latte with extra foam. The thought comes before I know it. Noor ordered a latte, too. I try to remember if she asked for regular milk or another kind. I wonder if she drinks a lot of coffee or if this is just a convenient date location. I wonder if she likes cloudy weather, or if she wears a lot of dresses like the one she’s wearing now. Does she listen to The Smiths? Maybe she writes poetry, or drives a motorcycle.
“I don’t know, I just think that persimmons are an entirely underrated fruit! The kind of tall round ones are mediocre, yeah, but the little flat donut ones? Amazing!” Noor and I are talking about fruit, for some reason. I look up from my distraction. I remember letting persimmons Greta picked go rotten in the fruit bowl.
“Yeah,” I say, but I’m really noticing how she has strangely beautiful knees.
“They taste kind of like sunshine.”
“I was going to say honey, but I totally get what you mean.” She twists her hair with her hands and puts it up in a bun on top of her head.
“I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really like strawberries.” I can’t stop looking at her; I think of dried persimmons and cream cheese with someone’s hands I can’t quite place. She raises her eyebrows in disbelief.
“No way. You’re lying.”
I tell her I’m not lying, and she laughs. She’s got a hiccupping sort of laugh, and I think of all of the places that I might hear it in the future. I imagine all of the ways we are going to hurt one another.
