The Intimacy Collection, Part One

a primer for knowing your best friend's lover how to get to know your best friend's lover: ask them to brunch, together, at your favorite place. recommend the pancakes. don't get the coffee here. go hiking at that one place, the one by the river. they bulldozed the path you took as kids, but the new park is nice too. feels like beginning. talk at the counter during a house party. agree that the music sucks. yeah, you were never into diplo anyway. hiking again, in the snow. none of you are wearing snowboots. you abandon your shoes in the backseat as soon as you climb back into the car. go to that hip new bar you wanted to try. order the fancy cocktail. it's not good, but it was eight dollars. you finish it. drive across the country. spend twenty one hours in a car. sleep on the sidewalk outside of a government building. make the news. tell them your secrets over a bottle of wine. when you make it back to the hotel, you all strip down to your dress shirts and tumble into separate beds. somewhere, there are sirens. you are not involved. pack boxes into their truck. they are leaving and it hurts like new skin under a blister. they are hand in hand and you are alone, hand in hand with your own lover feeling like a fledgling. invite them to Thanksgiving, at your place. you're old enough to host now and it's strange to all be in the same place. kiss your best friend on the cheek and pin on their corsage. wipe tears from their cheeks and bring them into your arms. you wrote a wedding toast the night they met, carried it in your pocket. it's been five years, and it's burning a hole in your dress. this is the moment we've all been waiting for: all the scrap of paper says is thank you for joining us.

skin hunger/stomach hunger all the touches i crave like sugar: together, in the kitchen leaning over the stove. my arm is around your waist, and yours lingers on my hip. your fingers are light on my skin, tentative. side by side, on the couch, my feet on your lap. you laugh into your phone, i smile into my book. in the airport, after a long flight, i lean into your touch. my cheek rests on your shoulder. your hair brushes my nose. i stifle a sneeze. one evening, in a dance class, learning the tango. i have my hand on your waist and you rest yours on my shoulder. we are laughing, and i don't step on your toes– not once. walking in a city i have never seen, your fingers brush mine. we leave them touching. i am crying in a grocery store. you wrap your arms around me, pull me flush to your chest. your breathing slows mine. two weeks with only handshakes and a stiff, compulsory embrace. the stranger's leg against mine on an airplane seat feels like a mercy. my skin aches. after a long drive, your hand in my hand feels like coming home.

your love language is quality time any time with you is quality: between shifts, laughing in a car when we share our deepest secrets. i never knew you were aching to open up. once the seam split, everything spilled out. dancing in the kitchen. you scrubbing the dishes, me flipping the pancakes. a movie neither of us wanted to see but did anyway. the time we went to Dollywood and i held your hand on all the rollercoasters. a painting class we took together. i messed up and the mountains i painted looked uncomfortably like breasts. you laughed until your cheeks hurt. the beach, with sand between our toes and in our mouths and everywhere between. a diner at midnight, over a slinger. you'd never eat one, but you want me to be happy. the grocery store, choosing wine– a subtle reminder that every moment together, we are choosing each other.

emotional intimacy and you like fingers brush on fingers, that first tentative swipe of a hand-hold, our souls have brushed– jumped back, skittish. with every secret heard and spoken the distance between us closes: it is an unbuilding. so i speak my first love, my heartbreak and you speak your father never loved you and i speak my dreams, my need for novelty my constant indecision. you say you understand like your first boyfriend broke up with you through text message at your grandma's funeral and you've never trusted a ring tone since you've killed every plant you ever touched but buy them anyway. i find silence uncomfortable and you can't stand small talk. it's a pumice stone to the heart, scraping off callous. carving room for one another– we grow closer like my heart was limping and the cast's come off.