Lemon//Lilac Bars

plus an untold story of recklessness

I’ve never been a stranger to recklessness but this version was the kind that let me slip into the backseat and rest my head on someone’s shoulder instead of the one doing the heavy lifting. I wanted to believe this.

After days of having my children’s toe nails scrape my thighs in the middle of the night, my infant’s fingers that reached for me and my body and my hair for endless hours during the day. After I had explained to my four year old repeatedly that I know you miss your dad and I’m sorry that hurts but I am better this way and that means something. After I cleaned formula stains out of onesies and the glass of kombucha my daughter spilled on the dining room carpet. After I finally cleansed my skin that was speckled with flour and sweat, I was afforded the type of recklessness I was convinced said, yes, you’ve been a very good mother, now put your feet up. She was older than me but untethered and obnoxious. She leaned her entire bodyweight into her sarcasm. In a room full of strangers that had only ever made it within 20 feet of her, having never spoken directly, knew exactly who you were talking about before you said her name. She took all the attention from me in all of the ways I wished for. Instead of the ring leader I could be the side-kick for once. I thought that this was affording me the type of rest that I had been desperately seeking for years only it was the opposite. I tried to convince myself that she was expanding the acceptable parts of my reckless side. I could let my hair down. Have another drink. I could let my body be worshiped. I thought that she would see my ability to ground her as her home. I wanted to be a person’s home that I never actually housed. I wanted to believe that this type of shadowy lust was a declaration of both hunger and commitment. I wanted to believe this every time I folded myself inside out in search for proof that this was meant to be. I didn’t want to believe the truth which was “we aren’t loved in the ways we choose, we are loved in the ways we are loved.” - Leslie Jamison (Splinters)

When I begin writing this paragraph I wrote “it was three weeks into us dating when I realized that the night before wasn’t just a case of having one too many.” When in reality I knew the night of our first official date when she took me to a restaurant and flashed both me and cash in a way that was both exhilarating and embarrassing. I wanted to say, “I can split the bill with you” but I couldn’t. I felt like a sixteen year old sitting at a table at Olive Garden thinking, it doesn't get any better than this. I felt like I was cosplaying as a wealthy, recent divorcee that just wanted to be taken out for a night on the town. I was on display, and a good one at that. Except all of it was true- all but the wealthy bit.

The night of our first official date I slipped out of my black dress and into the sheets of her bed I could tell needed to be washed. Even through a clouded brain induced by many glasses of wine, I fucked her. I quickly realized I couldn’t decipher between whether or not her eyes were closing in pleasure or if she was beginning to start the swift process of a blackout. I picked my head and body up from in between her thighs and said, why don’t you get some sleep. Her eyes shot open and with an unnecessarily loud decibel she shouted, “Laura, Stop! I’m fine!”