Will I Remember How To Love You
By Kat George
When I finally meet you, will I remember how to love you? I think, somewhere in the last–what is it now? Almost 4 years?–of being mostly alone, or at least not in love, maybe I forgot what you’re supposed to do when you are in love. For instance, will I remember how to pull my limbs in from my nightly spread eagle in bed, and not hate you for taking up half the space that has, for so long, been mine, ALL MINE, GOD DAMNIT?
Will I remember how to lie awake on Sunday morning while you sleep, counting the freckles that pepper your back? Will I remember how to care about all the boring, stupid minutiae of your job, and I don’t mean just pretend to care, but actually, genuinely give a shit when you call me up to tell me how your boss did so and so and it pissed you off? Will I remember how to kiss you when you’ve got a cold, because I don’t give a tiny rats ass if I catch anything off you, and because your snot and phlegm aren’t as vile to me as they are to the people you mash up against in the subway on your morning commute? Will I remember to not always be right, to compromise, and not bolt for the highway when things aren’t going my way? Will I remember how to give you a bite of my delicious burrito, OK, two bites, or three, without getting resentful that your too-huge chomps are eating into something that I wanted all to myself?
And if it turns out that I have become completely stupid and selfish, will you be patient enough to remind me how to love you? Will you remind me that if I don’t want to share my popcorn while we’re watching TV, I can just make double? Will you remind me how nice it is to wake up in the morning as someone that loves me too strokes the hair out of my face in the dusty, pale light? Will you remind me how to let you change the lightbulb, fix my computer, bring me tea when I’ve had a hard day, instead of trying to do everything on my own? Will you remind me how to line up your shoes next to mine when you stay the night? Will you remind me how to call you in the evening, even when I don’t want to talk to anyone, how to meet you on my lunch hour, and how to make sure my friends save a seat for you at dinner next Friday night? Will you remind me that we’re on the same team, and that instead of everything that I am halving, it actually swelled to twice the size?
Say it works out, and you electroshock my memory back into motion, and I remember how to love you in all the ways that someone should be loved, will you love me back? Will you humor me when I care about something so much my head explodes and brain guts spatters the wall? Will you support me when I’m working hard, sweating blood, to make the picture of my life I drew when I was a child? Will you think I’m adorable when I stick my bottom lip out because LA Burrito was closed when we got there, and all the other burrito stores too? Will you still think I’m adorable when we get home and I just. Wont. Let. It. Go? Will you check me when I give you the stink eye for putting your hand on the hip of that pretty girl you’re talking to at the party, because it’s innocent and you love me and I’m a jealous idiot? Will you think I’m beautiful right after I’ve done the eggiest hell fart anyone ever farted? Will you understand that sometimes I do forget, will forget, exactly how to love you, but that I’ll always be sorry when I do?