I can’t say if the room was real, or memory stitched together. Particles of light burnt into my child mind, or conjured from the urgent hormones of my plastic teenage brain. In any case, I feel more than ever, in the second year of my son's birth, a longing to be in that room. 

On the question of having kids, I wavered. Kids were something to be put on and taken off the table. He was confident and talked of having two, with solid names beginning with A. I could see it, and then it would break apart. Breaks happen slowly, over time. A splitting, cell by cell, invisible to the naked and negligent eye. Thinking back, these were the first hairline fissures. Below, time ground the plates of our marriage.

When his dad died the air shifted.

Grief has an atmospheric quality: thick and shapeless. It crushes you as you gasp for air with a collapsed lung. His grief was heavy, and we struggled to withstand its weight.  Four years into our marriage, we treated the loss with change.  A change in boroughs, in homes, in careers. I started grad school. We bought a sunlit three bedroom in an up-and-coming neighborhood with an old country name. I found empty bottles of Titos in drawers. We hosted spontaneous rooftop BBQs with mismatched tables and chairs. I bought two tickets to a sex party. We had close friends move in for months and family parade in for holidays. I helped him sleepwalk to the spare bedroom, his full weight on my shoulder.

The room called to me like a hunger. I was on a mission to fold the disparate parts and pieces of myself together, so I could taste the whole picture. A whole picture to fill a hole. Find a girl and sleep with her. You want to feel a girl, not a baby. His fear trailed me, and I ran. But I reveled in the exploration, bathing in pink light and seeing what another body like mine could feel like.

Self-discovery is a curious thing.

It is hard to keep to yourself. Months after graduating from school, I met up with the Other. The Other had a porous sense of fidelity, had cycled through girlfriends, and was dating a mutual friend. As I shared the details of my exploits over nursed drinks, my story began to shape shift. I sensed the Other’s intrigue, and it toppled me.  We danced around it, played with it, strategized at bars here and there. Two cats, toying with a living mouse. We were friends and no strangers to minor flirtations.

But, I told myself I was done. Then I was pregnant. After giving birth, my body went into hibernation. Of course, it performed all its biological duties. As it did, my mind quaked under the weight of postpartum depression. He was there but not there, and then he was gone. Always leaving, closing the door behind him, even when he was sitting in front of me. I cried. Not for him or me, but for us. For the kids we were. Interesting how the moment of birth begins a death clock. 

 The work of work and the work of motherhood kept my mind occupied with purpose, so I kept going, pulled by a million strings for two years. As my body thawed, I observed with distant reflection the changes. No one else looked at me. Even my son forgot what my body had done. 

One morning, on my way to the playground, I called a dear friend.  We gushed about guys from the past, guys who had never been. The playground was filled with hot and not-hot dads. I wondered what they all did for work. I wondered why he was so conspicuously absent from these wholesome, enviable parental vignettes. "God, I wish I had known what it was like to fuck the Other." We both agreed we needed to get fucked. Later that day, I turned a corner in the city and there was the Other walking towards me smiling with perfect teeth.

We started the night as friends do, probing into each other lives, respectfully. The Other had tried polyamory. I had spent two vacations alone with my son. We walked through the city, lights, people, a Ferris wheel in little Italy, and dipped into another bar. "What," the Other said in that knowing way, leaning against my leg. "I just want to make out with you...." A cab pulled over, sensing urgency.

“I’m very oral,” the Other says, and consumes everything: me, my saliva, my blood. The Other touches me and my body burst into existence. Back from the dead. The Other stands in the doorway, tall and just right. Blue eyes and dark pupils. The Other is the space between every pause, dislodging any good intention. All I can think is, "I want THAT." The high ceilings. The messy sheets. The plants in the window. The cat. The hairband on the floor from someone else. 

Womanhood and motherhood are distinct systems. They do not play well together. My mind splits in two trying to live in both. To be sure, you want both, but how often does that happen. The Other was sent to ensure these worlds never meet.  Mirages of a fully joined future dance on the edges.  Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances. Of course, the Other is only interested in being friends. Our emotional shorthand is, “Deep, but not romantic.” I am feeling it all. Mostly hunger.

We meet in Industry City for coffee at a casual hour. I realize the Other is an artist. When you are an artist, you are compelled to make, your hands subservient to your ideas. I am not an artist. My ideas paralyze my hands. We walk up a narrow stairwell and see a crack of light from a partially open door. The door opens to a floor scattered with debris, broken chairs upended, wooden pallets on their sides, sheets of blue foam. In the theater of life, this is an artful deconstruction of our studio days. The light is slanted blue. I have a feeling we are going to fuck here. We weave to the windows and the Other takes my picture, silhouetted on a chair, and walks over to show me. The electrons change direction. “Are you going to kiss me?” the Other does, in that good way, then turns me away, up against a column.

This is going to end soon.

Either in an instant like it began, or slow and drawn out. It is hard to tell. I suppose it could go either way, and whichever way the hammer falls, it will hurt. I made myself fall in love, or I fell in love with an idea, a version of me, with the Other or not the Other. I surprised myself that I was still capable of all these things. The longing place is a room that is always there, lodged in space. No matter how quiet it is, I always know it will send out a signal, and I will answer it. (2020)