Dangle
The purple earrings, so dark they almost blend into my hair, but light enough to catch a glimpse of sunlight, are in the earholes I can find easily without looking into the mirror. Once, I used to shudder when I saw women do that, seemingly stabbing their ears until the hole was found. They’re a gift from my mom—when in doubt, get me earrings—I often say, my wrist void of bracelets and necklaces worn rarely because the length gets too tight around my thickened neck.
Something so simple, and yet I didn’t have these when I loved you. My ears were blank, naked, nothing heavy hanging from them. I remember once, my lips caked in gloss, you wiped it off so that you could taste the real me. Much of our relationship spent peeling back the layers of the masks we wore growing up. Now, the earrings and all these things you don’t know about me.
When I lived in Peru, vendors at the bus stop would hold up earrings to my cracked open window, trying to sell them to me until I turned my naked lobe to them and said, No tengo huecos. I don’t have holes.
But at that time, you were still a hole in me. Dark dirt deep, I imagined a man digging out soil, rich with copper glitter in it. Afterwards, the hole became a crater so deep you could fall in and only see the sky—distant, beautiful, cold—cluttered with stars that’d struggled to give me a direction home.
When I was ready to come home from Peru after two-and-a-half years, I found myself buying earring set after earring set: the silver filigree, the beads, the shells, all with the idea that I’d give them away. But I wanted them.
Back in the U.S., holding my sister-in-law’s hand, the saleswoman stapled holes into my ears. The sound caused me to flinch, but I had what I never knew I wanted—two holes to dangle pretty things from.
It’s odd that we knew each other so well once. I liked looking into your eyes—we’d question, answer, question, answer, no words. Both sets of our eyes warm and worn, one brown, one blue.
Sitting across from you, these earrings swaying back and forth each time I lean towards you, I am reminded that I didn’t have earrings when I loved you. I was afraid of the pain and didn’t want them. And now, I’m so used to them that I would barely feel if they were in or out.
So much has changed, and yet there is a feeling of the past as if I’m sitting in a seat left warm by someone else who just got up, and so casually, I feel my body relax into that old space as if it remembers.
My skin sticks to the seat as we stand and say our good-byes; it protests me leaving. My earrings keep swaying: little pendulums counting time. That daisy chain I once compared you to got lost in a move, but I still remember it as I remember loving you. Strange magic: This reunion.