Let's Hang

Robyn – Hang With Me (4:20)

By: Brian Oliu

As long as love isn’t involved we can be together:  we can walk along to the song of kings as long as there are no queens, we can kiss as long as we remain one’s own.  You and I hanged during sunshine hours—we wore sweaters that were once worn by others:  the smell of musk to keep the moths away, our fingers forming fists inside our sleeves to keep them warm, to keep the yarn between us and our hands so that we do not forget we should never touch.  You would sing to me:  happy birthday with syllables I could not break into pieces I understood—no sounds I could swallow and repeat; my tongue as clumsy as a broken door handle, an orange wedge in a stiff drink.  To learn your language is to love you, and this is something we can never do, because you and I know how it ends. 

Here is a list of things we can do and here are the promises we can keep:

We can meet at the airport because you wanted to see me:  you wanted to dip fries in ketchup, you wanted to crash glasses together, you wanted to talk about whatever it is we can talk about—the weather here, the weather back home, the weather.  We talk about the sweaters:  how I buzzed the door to your apartment and we had a nice walk—looking both ways before crossing the street, a gentle jog before a skip up to the curb.  We can make a promise to meet a year from now at a bar I’ve never been to, a bar where you know the owners:  drinks in mason jars, lips resting on ridges, the clicking of bottom teeth against glass—never my teeth and yours.  We can have dinner—split pea soup in a train car on the side of a highway. 

Here is the problem:  this is all pretend.  Because I will hang around without you like the wings on a burnt body.  Because I will stare into your light eyes like they are the sun before I tell you that this is not wistful, that I am the one out of place—a snowdrift on the side of the road melting in the salt.  I told you before we know how it ends.  It ends with you cutting off all of your hair.  It ends with holes in sleeves where our thumbs pushed through.  It ends recklessly, headlessly.  It ends with only you agreeing.