Chapter 2: The Makings of Love: Learning the Ropes

There was no other way of putting it. It had been too long since I'd written a letter or made coffee for two or highlighted passages in poetry books for a lover who would consider the gesture equal to a proposal of marriage. In the moment, those things are second nature. You take shorter showers to spare the hot water and you change the bedcovers more often so that they are fresh on the skin. You even start learning how to do all sorts of things you had no interest in before, like baking fresh brownies and serving them up hot to settle your lover's stomach before bed. Everyone goes about it differently, but those are some of the ways I expressed my love. Primarily, however, I did it by eye contact. Only now I have trouble even glancing at people for the briefest of moments and I have deserted recipe books for Plath's journals again. It is so easy, once someone has brought your hands to their mouth to kiss goodbye, to fall back into the habit of isolation. There can be no argument: solitude is an indulgence. I am guilty of enabling my own loneliness. I fix myself before a computer and write stories about girls selling poems by the side of highways. I avoid phonecalls and ignore concerned e-mails. I am quite happy to remain transfixed in my state of quiet grief, the kind that undresses me at night until I am curled up in bed like an infant, bawling at nothing in particular. For a long time, I allow myself to detach from everything: friends, work, school, memories. It is a process that I am always convinced will help, but which never does, though I return to it regardless.