New York, January 2024

A dog barked at me while I waited by the East Village subway exit. The sky hung heavy, a muddied shade of blue, and the smell of cigarette smoke lingered faintly in the air. I kept shooing the barking dog away, anxious it might reveal my presence, but the moment I spotted Silly’s auburn eyes behind his smudged square glasses, I stepped into the street to meet him.

“Elle!” he called, his voice echoing a cadence I hadn’t heard since we were sixteen, since we were going to prom. But we weren’t sixteen and we weren’t going to prom. We were twenty-one, finding each other in New York, wearing years of silence like badges. His camel-colored jacket fit differently—he looked fuller, full of stories I hadn’t heard. The boy I wanted to marry seemed left behind, back in that room we used to lie naked in, but we weren’t there anymore. We were here, walking toward Central Park, knowing we shouldn’t be. His scent had changed—no longer pine-covered laundry but something older, dustier, like an attic long untouched. We threaded ourselves through the city, weaving in and out of stores, leaving behind echoes of who we used to be.

It grew colder as we walked, and we ended the day in a bar. The drink we ordered was fruity, with blackberry undertones. His laugh felt unfamiliar yet comforting. We giggled, taking turns impersonating a friend from high school, a shared memory that felt like a bridge to the past. As the glasses emptied, I grew bold. “What happened with that girl?” I asked.

He paused, looking at me above his glasses. “She was very sad. Not well. Most nights, she couldn't smile, laugh, or do anything but cry.” His heavy words slumped in the air before he added, “But we still talk sometimes, and I think she’s okay now.” He muttered her name, even spelled it out as if he was worried he would have forgotten it. I felt an unreasonable urge to reach out to this girl, to promise her that she was loved, even by a stranger who knew nothing of her except how her old lover spoke her name. When he asked, “What happened with Julien?” I hesitated. My thoughts churned with memories of control, of shame that still clung to me.

I said simply, “It wasn’t good. He wasn’t good. Over time, I became convinced I was a bad person and selfish, and it didn’t work out.” I thought of Julien begging me not to speak of the things he controlled; he did not want me to tell people what he asked of me.

Silly’s brows furrowed. “What made you think that?”

I smiled thinly. The drink had loosened my nerves, “There were clothes I couldn’t wear, shows I shouldn’t watch, jokes I shouldn’t make. He told me that when I did not wear a bra, it made him anxious; he made me promise not to, and yet I still did. I would wear the clothes, lie about the shows I watched, and dull down the jokes he didn’t like. Didn’t that mean I was selfish?” He didn’t reply immediately, only looking at the bartender. I added, quieter, “I used to think Julien being that way was my karma for maybe hurting you.”

Silly’s hands were tangled in his hair. His gaze snapped back to mine. “You didn’t hurt me, Elle. Not at all.” He sucked in a breath. “If anything, I hurt you. I used you… after we broke up.”

The words stung, and I didn’t know how to respond. I smiled awkwardly instead, as if tripping over an uneven sidewalk. “It’s fine,” I said finally. “You didn’t know. You didn’t know I still cared like that.”

His shoulders sagged under the weight of the moment. “But I did, Elle. I shouldn’t have done that over and over.”

Eager to stray the conversation from my previous mistakes, I announced monotonically, “My phone died.”

“I can walk you home.” He said and paid the bill.

We left the bar in a fog of reading between the lines. Silly is a very physical person. I only knew him in that context—for how he touched, wanted to be touched, and played the game of trying to touch. The more he spoke and asked about my life, the more I was surprised that we ever got along this well.

Aboard the subway, when the service was lost and people were talking loudly, he played music for me by placing his headphones over my ears, the way a mother would protect her impressionable child. I pretended for a split second, only a moment, that we were happy again; he never used me for my body, and I never dated Julien after him; Julien never robbed me of my perception of love, and Silly had kept all our promises. We were happy.  A happiness that becomes constant, a settling joy that sits in the lower part of your stomach and holds you down wherever you are. A joy that smells like morning chamomile tea and late-night espresso. The joy of joint failure. The failure of being in love. I let the moment pass quickly with each station we stopped at. As much as I tried to focus on the music, I fixated on Silly’s shaking hands, his “tremulous hands,” we had nicknamed them.

When we reached my friend’s place, he joined us in our endeavor for the night. There is a bar in the East Village called The Library, known for its gothic theme: ghost-like paintings, bloodied drinks, black and white horror movies projected on the wall, and a prominent painting of Emily Dickinson’s skeleton. I thought of the poet and how I adored the way she spoke of death. On the writer's tombstone in Amherst, Massachusetts, “called back” is written above her grave. Where was she called back to? I thought of her maybe as an angel who wanted to try out being human or as a bird who wanted to feel love. Where had she been before she was here? Her eyes in the portrait felt familiar to me.

Drinks somehow continued to appear in front of us, over and over, and at one point, edging three in the morning, Silly stood behind me as we squeezed through the crowd; when I turned back, Silly kissed me. The familiar press of his lips was intoxicating and wrong. I knew I’d wake up afraid of the consequences of being found out. I didn’t want Julien to call me a slut or shame me. I had a profoundly irrational fear of him. I worried he was right that I was selfish and evil for wanting to see someone from my past. Despite Julien and I’s separation, his control over me remained prominent; I was terrified of being caught in the wrong. Was he right to accuse me of missing Silly? The shame boiled in me so heavily that I continued to drink, but for that moment, I let myself dance with my first love as though I owed it to my younger self. As he kissed me, I thought I, too, had been “called back” to my grave. I had run from Silly’s kisses many times, but there was something so tempting and curious about it. Perhaps Dickinson felt curious about death?

The following day, glitter clung to my skin as I pieced together the night over coffee. Silly had left, and I sat alone in silence, guilt, and anxiety twisting in my stomach. I thought about Julien and the class we shared back in Los Angeles.  I thought about the cruel things he might say if he found out.

However, he quickly found out. Silly told him in a burst of anxious regrets from a night of drinking, he wanted to be honest with Julien. Silly and he were friends of some sort; they had been close. Silly didn’t see the danger in it. To him, telling Julien was just another way to clear the air. Julien and I had broken up a year prior but recently attempted a cordial class friendship. Silly didn’t know how Julien could hold his guilt against me like a blade pressed to my throat.

It didn’t matter how long ago Silly and I dated or how meaningless it now was. To Julien, it was proof that I could love someone before him, someone he knew well,  and that was something he could never forgive. I wanted to be what he wanted, but Julien’s love came with conditions; I’d just failed them all.

I knew Silly would be fine. He did not think about the names I might be called or what people would whisper as I walked by. Silly did not know how I would take sleeping pills to attend the class I shared with Julien, just to ease my heartbeat.

Each day following New York, when I had returned from my weekend getaway, it felt like an uphill battle against shame, against the memory of Julien’s voice telling me I wasn’t enough, and against the guilt of being excited to see Silly again.

In the months that followed, I did not speak to Silly. The silence stretched like an old rope, fraying but never breaking. Julien—an unseen phantom—demanded an apology one day after our class. I had no words, nothing to explain the feelings in my chest.

“That’s what I thought!” He scoffed as I walked away with my head down, he shouted a little louder, “I was always right to be jealous; you ran right back to him!” My tears scattered on the floor. I knew the parts I had played, I knew the things I had lost, and I understood it all better than anyone, I didn’t need Julien to confirm that.

 Los Angeles, December 2024

I sat perched on a high-top barstool, feet dangling, sipping a syrupy drink that left my lips sticky and my throat dry. Lauren’s voice tumbled over itself, heavy with frustration. She spilled her words like a bartender overfilling a glass, and I nodded along, offering rehearsed sympathy while my mind drifted elsewhere.

“What are you thinking about?” Lauren asked.

“I keep thinking about how we didn’t say anything. It was so strange. I mean, Silly and I were standing side by side, hip to hip, and we pretended like we had never seen one another in our lives! He was there with Julien, too. It just feels strange that all of that happened, and we pretend it didn’t. But perhaps I am dramatic.” A few weeks before this conversation, I ran into Silly and Julien, and the two of them, as if rehearsed, pretended I was not a real person, just a ghost.

“They just probably didn’t know what to say. Maybe they feel bad?” She offered up.

“Maybe.” Then my phone buzzed as if I had beckoned him from beyond.  My stomach twisted, a familiar thrill and dread entwined. Silly.

“What is it?” Lauren asked, her curiosity cutting through the haze.

“Silly messaged me,” I said, the words barely audible. She did not believe me until I showed her my lit-up screen reflecting Silly’s name. I had not spoken to him since New York.

The same night he drove an hour from our hometown to stand before me again, like a dream I couldn’t quite shake. When he arrived, Silly’s shoulders were tight, his hands restless. He spoke nervously, asking about my life, writing, and places I’d been. I answered, circling the truth like a wary animal. I didn’t mention the shadow I’d lived under in those early months following New York.  I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t strong enough to withhold all the wrong choices I had made and splintered.

We walked through the cold December night, our words clouding the air between us. He touched me then, suddenly and softly, as if testing the moment's weight. And for an instant, I was seventeen again, foolishly believing I could rewrite our story. That somehow, I could make myself enough.

When Silly and I were seventeen, we had broken up, and in my heartbreak, I clung to any crumbs of him. He would openly admit to using me for my body; I think he found some pride in his honesty. But one day, just after we went to a friendly bookstore, we had sex, and while he pulled his jeans on and collected his wallet and phone to leave. I began to cry. The tears started slowly, then all at once. I had never felt so ashamed.

“I’m not sure why I am even crying,” I said as I sat bare-chested in my full-size bed. The afternoon light was spilling into the room and heated the carpet slightly. It was a lie; we both knew well why I was crying. We both knew Silly could ask to sleep with me whenever he liked, and I would walk to him with my tail between my legs. Looking back, I am not sure why? The sex wasn’t necessarily that spectacular; I think at that age, the world seemed so daunting, so terrifying; I was scared to be alive alone, and like I said, Silly is a very physical being so I accepted that this was his way of telling me I was not alone.

But he watched me cry several times, and typically, he would pat me on the back and say, “It will be okay.” or, “We don’t have to do this anymore.” Half the time, I would agree to stop speaking, but he would never adhere to it, always reaching out and convincing me that we could just grab a coffee and nothing would happen.

I was so ashamed of myself; I didn’t understand why I engaged in this self-harm. That day, when he watched me cry and quickly fled, I lay on the slightly heated carpet and cried and cried. The neighbor below me often played music, which I always found comforting. On this day, he played Vienna by Billy Joel repeatedly, as if he could somehow hear my cries. I felt slightly comforted and understood that one day, I would be strong enough not to endure this pain anymore.

On that December night, when he and I stood at twenty-two, I thought about how I would have turned out if he had not watched me cry so many times and not taken bits away from me, the way a gardener picks flowers. He might have listened when I asked him to leave my life because when I was seventeen, I wasn’t strong enough to reject the only person who had loved me. Maybe none of that had happened, and he might see me for what I am now: a woman who has loved people he has never heard of, a woman who has built a life for herself away from Julien and Silly, away from all the people who convinced me I was not worth keeping.

Before we parted, Silly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bag of powder. He quickly snorted it, leaving a faint residue on his upper lip. Some powder fell from his nose, wet with snot. Seeing it confirmed my fears; he wasn’t here for me. He was here to escape, to bury himself in something familiar. And I realized, with a pang, that I couldn’t be what he needed. I wasn’t the girl he remembered, and I wasn’t the balm for his loneliness.

“Also, I am sorry for telling Julien about New York, I didn’t know you guys still spoke back then.”

My heart sank a little, “We didn’t, really. He was just in one of my classes, and we talked for the first time in a long time right before I went to New York.”

“I didn’t think he would care that much, honestly,” Silly said, rubbing his nose.

“I think Julien and I wanted to try to be friends, but we were never very good at that.” I thought of telling Silly how often Julien was jealous of Silly and the comments he would make, the times he went through my personal things looking for clues about my care for Silly, and the times he made me deny my old love for him. It was a hard thing to explain the fear I had of Julien, someone not in my life anymore, but that is a part of Julien’s ways; even in months of silence, I always feared he was right. I did not tell Silly about the therapy I attended after New York trying to rebuild my perception of self and how tempted I was to almost throw it all away on this cold December night.

“Y’know, Silly, why are we here right now? I mean, we don’t even wish one another Happy Birthday, and I’m sure there are other people you could try to sleep with.”

He laughed slightly and inhaled, “I am not trying to sleep with you, I just like talking to you. Isn’t it such a thrill to not speak for a while and then randomly get together?”

His words hurt me profoundly. I thought maybe there had been a real reason to bring all this up again, to rehash the habits I had put to rest. I wanted all of the pain to be worth something, but no, Silly just liked the game.

The night closed around us, and we went our separate ways, the rope fraying further, threads snapping one by one. I wanted to understand why I kept letting him back in, even years later. Was it the thrill of recognition? The hope that I could be seen, even briefly, by someone who once saw me? When Silly and I were young, he held my hands on his own, noticing nail polish removal. “I’m so attracted to your bare nails,” he’d said as if it meant nothing, and I felt like I had been caught dancing while everyone else was seated. He had appreciated parts of me that I never did. Was this the feeling I was chasing? Or was it something else—an ache I couldn’t name, a pull toward things that never quite wanted me in return?

He had smiled before leaving, something off in the way his eyes flickered, a promise with no intention behind it. “I’ll see you soon,” he said casually, like it was inevitable. He hadn’t even looked back when he climbed into his car and didn’t bother with any trace of sentiment.

            I scoffed, half laughing, the hollow sound of it ringing in my chest. “You won’t,” I teased softly into the empty space, knowing those words never really meant anything. Once Silly had gone, I stood alone in the dark, watching his tail lights disappear. The distance between us was broader than I’d realized. I could feel it settle over me, thick and suffocating, like dust creeping into forgotten corners. His absence wasn’t painful, but it was real. Honest in the way that silence fills a room when all the voices have left. Watching him, I had felt something snap, not painfully, but like the flutter of wings too close to a wall. It was too small to escape, but somehow still pushing.

I wanted to ask him about his new habits, how things were with Julien, and how things had been after New York, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to know anymore. I didn’t want to care. I didn’t like the recognition, the bare nails, the pieces of me he could never truly see. I wasn’t waiting for him to return because I knew he wouldn’t. I was standing there alone, finally realizing that I had been waiting for someone who had never really been there.

I thought of Emily Dickinson, who stayed so still in her home, rooted in a place that saw her but never truly knew her. Yet, long after she’d passed, her words reached beyond the confines of her quiet life. I had repeatedly been “called back” to places I thought I had left behind. Each return felt like tracing a finger over old scars, revisiting stories that should have stayed buried. But unlike Dickinson, whose grave is adorned with offerings from those seeking connection, mine felt empty—a shrine to mistakes, to moments I wished had meant more or hurt less. The weight of it lingered like the silent Amherst cemetery, where every token laid on her tomb was a quiet plea for understanding. I had walked to my own gravesite too many times, unsure if I was the mourner or the ghost. But I would not listen to that whisper anymore. I would not let the past call me back like an echo of regret. I would not spend another moment believing I was a waste, that I was only as valuable as what had been taken from me.

I would find beauty in my own quiet revolutions—in the mornings I woke up and chose myself, in the music I played just to fill a room, in the way sunlight caught the ends of my hair on a warm afternoon. I would find it in the stillness of an empty road, in the first sip of coffee before the world was awake, in the stories I had yet to write and the love I had yet to feel. I would belong to only myself, no longer bound to the places that had let me down or the people who had only ever known pieces of me.

I would be worth something lovable and bright—something worth returning to, not out of guilt or grief, but because I was whole. Because I was free. Because I was alive…