The Kindest Thing She Almost Did, or “a poem from the perspective of Theo Mitz, a boy I broke in Voyager’s National Park in Minnesota”
Camille Thoms
It was the time when we fell asleep together, just to wake up and realize that we were too liminal to understand what a beginning or end meant.
She told me that she loved it when I ran my fingers along her back and so that is all I could ever do. All I knew was that I wanted her to be happy.
When she tells me that she loves me and that she is mentally unwell in the same breathe, I know that I am absolutely screwed but fuck it.
Because it’s her.
She makes me watch Avengers: Infinity War with her and she doesn’t even watch it. She watches me watching it to make sure I’m reacting properly.
I tell her all about my dream EDM festivals and my new tech equipment over dinner. Even though she doesn’t know anything about it, she tries to like screamo music and all the other stuff she doesn’t understand but I love.
I fall in love with her quickly. The way she wanted me to. All skin and fingertips and Peace Tea. Listening to Avril Lavigne on the couches in Beason as she plays with my hair and calls me “babe” and “handsome” and all the things I thought I would never hear.
When I find one of her ex-boyfriend’s hairs in the rough drafts of her poems, I pretend not to.
When I asked her why she stayed with him so long, she said, “He was so good at acting like someone else.”
I wonder if she wants a partner or a fling, a rock or a chase. Someone who cares or someone who couldn’t care less.
When she explains to me that he is still the spare key to her good poems, I tell her it is no problem. I do not cry.
I try not to be jealous when he is the flood in our backyard that is so close to ruining everything we have built.
I try not to hate myself for falling in love with a drought dressed like a girl.
But I do hate myself for falling in love with feeling left.
I see in her eyes the words she wishes to speak. She wants to say,
“Loving you is the kindest thing I almost did.”
How impossible it is to train a heart to sit and stay.
The last time she says my name it foams off her perfect lips. She is angry with me for not being mad at her while she hurts me.
“I don’t know how to love someone with my whole being!” She shouts.
And all of a sudden, I feel so stupid and so small as I tell her, “Well. I don’t know how not to.”
In an effort to get her to stay, I promise her, “I will be whatever you want me to be. Whatever you need me to be.”
She tells me that that is the problem.