He trusts like a child, open hands and wide eyes. Sun dances behind his amber irises. He is so unlike me, but he makes me want to feel that free. I don’t think I have trusted since my father left when I was six, leaving me with the perpetual sense that any man who tells me that he loves me has got something up his sleeve. All of my other father figures dying young cemented this fact. I am cursed to love with all my bone and marrow, but never feel that love returned. But this man has good parents, and he talks to strangers on the train and helps strangers find places and old ladies load their groceries, and he can make friends with anyone. When my grandfather dies, he catches my tears with long fingertips as they fall, and he kisses my cheeks. He holds my shaking body in his thick palms, and he whispers reassurances. He’s a good man. I have only known a few, but I know the signs. 

I don’t know what I did to deserve him, but I want to keep doing whatever it is. On a bad day, I tell my therapist that sometimes I feel bad for doing whatever it is that I did to make him love me. I tell her that to love me is to be cursed. Maybe there is some past ancestor who explains why everyone in my family either ends up alone or dies with only one good love turned sour or ended tragically under their belt. Maybe some man did wrong to a Thomas or Worthley woman, and we are all paying the debt. Maybe we were cursed, Practical Magic style. Or maybe it’s just good old fashioned generational trauma, passed from my father’s mother to him, my mother’s mother to her, recycled down to me. There is no one to be blamed, except whatever it is that allows things like poverty and addiction and broken families and loss and slavery to exist. Maybe I am just carrying all of these sad stories inside of me. Maybe that is why I feel so old before thirty. 

For now, I try to ignore generational curses. For now, I love without abandon. I say a prayer to summon my five year old self’s trust. For now, we play footsie under the covers. I shove my cold toes against his leg, and he cries out, and this is the most pain that we will ever cause each other. We laugh and roll around in bed. He pretends to eat me. I pretend to not want to be consumed. My lips bite his. I leave marks against his neck. Longing for some kind of permanence in this world where there are no guarantees. We lock eyes and I try to tell him with mine, “Please stay.” I try to tell him. “I want you.” I try to tell him, “I love you too, but the want feels more important.” I try to tell him, “Please don’t be just another thing that I lose.”