Transatlanticism

He describes her as “the girl he loves” and it makes me chuckle into my hair. It's such a trite way to describe a woman. Cheesy song lyrics. Corny, like referring to sex as “making love” and all that bullshit. It doesn't define anything. For all I know, he's never even met her, but it makes everyone bat their eyelashes and sigh collective breaths of understanding. It only makes sense to the people who are in love. All intensity and heaving chests, air escaping their lungs like bursting balloons.

The ones like me paint their nails black and purse their lips in perpetual disbelief, understanding the lie before it even leaves his parted lips. Before there’s even a chance to tell the truth.

But it’s simpler that way. Stretching an arm to take a photo of yourself while stumbling through another drunken night over West London’s cobblestoned side streets. Sipping a strange fruity concoction from a late bar that you would never order yourself, but it’s okay because it was bought for you. And, in retrospect, it tastes delicious.

Another week is wasted whether it’s on one side of the Atlantic or another and you’re not quite jaded enough to accept it’s the same everywhere you go. So you hold out the hope that you can change it by crossing a different ocean or mountain range or reaching out for that unavailable thing—you haven’t named it yet—that keeps slipping in and out like a wave licking sand.

You dig your toes in deep but no matter what, the tide ebbs. But that moment of contact will carry you through another week here, a month there, however long it takes to settle on a good name.

-L