Heart Reacts — Angelo Hernandez-Sias

WHEN JULIO WAS AN ORGANIC HOTDOG

Julio Peña, twenty-one, lies in the dark on a punctured air mattress, reinflated nightly, in his childhood bedroom, now his mother’s office, tightly packaged beneath his weighted blanket (a gift from his girlfriend Deja, who isolates in her childhood bedroom six hundred ninety-five miles away, in DC, tethered though she is to Julio via so-called end-to-end encryption—I am end-to-end encrypted, Julio thinks, I am sealed tight) like an organic hotdog of the sort his father sometimes grills for their pit bull Fluffy, age one or seven, depending, technically property of Stacey, live-in derelict at the Peña residency and former girlfriend of Irvins, Julio’s brother, eighteen and back home after a brief stint living quote unquote independently, about whom Julio sometimes emails Sadiya—Irvins packed his stuff today and left, Julio emailed—how’s the side piece, Quentin asks via FaceTime—friendship of the mind, Julio insists—though of course he and Sadiya email about other things too—as well, Sadiya here interjects—fine, he and Sadiya email about other things as well (see the thread re: oh noon), like ghosts and reflective nostalgia and the nature of epistolary romances—your letters stretch my brain and remind me how much I forget you, Julio emailed—one might want something very intensely, Sadiya emailed, and think that’s a kind of love, but really one is in love with the liminal distance between what one wants and what one can have—in a letter both a reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, Anne Carson writes, short blinding passages are all it takes—written kisses never arrive at their destination, Franz Kafka writes, the ghosts drink them up along the way—though of course email is not their sole means of transmitting short blinding passages and/or written non-kisses, no, they text daily, right now, in fact, lying there in bed, he is heart reacting to an iMessage—at a very niche intersection of my interests, Sadiya texts, there’s this bot that tweets out lines about food from Sylvia Plath’s diaries—I am a pig and have three hunks of cake, Sylvia Plath tweets—I licked my arm for the salt taste, Sylvia Plath tweets—when he receives from Deja, his girlfriend, an iMessage in Invisible Ink—my sweet jujube, Deja texts, I’ve been thinking about, um, textual intercourse—it’s dawning on me just how long World Quar Three is going to last, Deja double-texts, lol—we’ve done it before what’s that app again? Julio replies though he remembers its name, remembers its promise of super-duper-end-to-end encryption, remembers wanting her, wanting her badly enough to chafe himself stiff and transmit documentation of said stiffness via super-duper-end-to-end encrypted auto-destruct messages in the app, just as he remembers lying next to her in bed on campus months ago like an erect dog with his tongue dangling and his paw scratching at his underbelly—in my own so-called fiction I usually avoid crass similes, Julio writes, but just a few days ago I was at Blake’s house, sitting six feet from Blake in a lawn chair, and Blake’s dog Chico was sitting on a lawn chair of his own, erect, scratching at his underbelly, and Blake said put away that red rocket!—while Deja, lying on her side of the extra-long twin mattress, on her side, facing away, said she was sorry, it was the antidepressants—shame on you! Julio had thought, addressing not Deja but his throbbing red rocket, which of course wasn’t red, as if to deflate it, which eventually happened, hard commit, so that even on the blue moons Deja pressed herself against him, she was just pushing herself against his mush, and he was the one saying he was sorry and he was tired, though he had no antidepressants to blame, so it went that they hadn’t had sex in a number of months anyway, even before most students on campus fled to their childhood bedrooms—it was winter, Ben Marcus writes, which meant that a pelvic frost had fallen across the land—but the sex preceding the pelvic frost was so amehzing that Julio hopelessly waited in the hope that he might again experience the mehmory brought to life—but no, as it happened, their celibacy began before everyone else’s—celibacy is good for the Art, Lina texted—well then I expect to see some results! Julio replied—what no pussy does to a mf, says the caption of a meme Sadiya sent, a drawing of Gregor Samsa writhing on his insect back in bed—Marcus sent me this lol, Sadiya said—but tonight the moon is blue quote unquote indeed, or so Julio gathers from Deja’s virtual pushing-of-herself against him, a gesture whose vulnerability he can appreciate, even sympathize with—how long did her finger hover over the blue arrow, Julio wonders, before pressing it and holding it and releasing it—Signal lol, Deja texts, not tn bc I’m pooped but maybe down the line? [suggestive eyes]—absolút, Julio texts—knowing that the sexts won’t materialize no matter the length of quarantine, that the so-called application, once reinstalled, will go untouched in their phones while they touch themselves in the privacy of their childhood bedrooms, unless perhaps she musters the will to follow through, unless perhaps she forgets that he does not want her anymore, as he suspects she does not want him, but rather, through this virtual pushing-of-herself against him, wants him to think that she wants him—speaking of pooped, Julio texts, I’m gonna knock out, love you—oof, Deja texts, totally forgot you were headed to bed—as if to remind Julio that he has been getting ready for bed a lot lately, a few nights ago he was getting ready for bed while watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with his parents, last night he was getting ready for bed while rifling the fridge for waffles—waffles are my chief spiritual practice, Julio emailed Sadiya—even today he spent getting ready for bed, because he hadn’t slept well, though he spent much of the previous day getting ready for bed too/as well—why the oof, Julio texts, sorry if I was short—no sweat, Deja texts, I love you too—while Deja spends very little time getting ready for bed, because bed is bæ—good morning, she sometimes texts Julio past noon, then, hours later, sends a meme: Will Smith of Bel-Air, captioned “the mental illness,” grinning inches from the face of Carlton, bedbound and blurry in a pin-striped nightcap, captioned “me”—no, Deja is already ready for bed, never ready to leave it, and Julio, who, under quarantine, grows increasingly sympathetic towards her bed-magnetism, is lying on his own bed-magnet, getting ready for bed-magnet while scratching himself and heart reacting to Sadiya’s text about Sylvia Plath’s twitter bot, Sadiya adores Sylvia Plath—I feel like Esther beneath the fig tree, Sadiya emailed shortly after Unmasking Historical Legacies, the conference at which they met—it occurred to me that my vision of the fig tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to the earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach, Sadiya quoted, then went on to describe a lovely picnic with Marcus, also lovely—no doubt about it, Young Werther writes, Albert is the best fellow on earth—and Marcus, in a gesture consistent with his loveliness, reminded Sadiya that she was free to research whatever she liked, then offered her an Oreo—it turns out, Sadiya wrote, that when figging out one must simply lay one’s jacket on the grass and eat some Oreos—it’s a bit too cold here to lie on the grass and eat Oreos, Julio emailed while sitting beside Deja in Widener Library, but maybe I’ll lie on the library floor and pretend—and to Sadiya’s text about the Twitter bot, Julio says, safely—twitter is redeemed—before setting the phone facedown on his chest and cracking his thumbs, sore from scrolling, while in the dark his heart knocks against the screen, not for long, when figging out one must simply check one’s phone, so he checks again, nothing, false vibrations, just his screensaver, so familiar as to be invisible: a meme Deja once sent him: Naruto, winking and grinning while performing the shadow clone jutsu, a speech bubble jutting from his neck—don’t give up bitch!

THE FROZEN RIVER BY BRIAN GREENE

Under close scrutiny, Brian Greene writes, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen into place—what the hell does this mean, Julio’s father said, bent over the book at the table—hell if I know, Julio said—Einstein said that the problem of the now worried him seriously, Julio quoted in an email to Sadiya—who knows what it means, Julio wrote, but it makes me think of how your now is seven hours ahead of mine—I woke up Tuesday with a missingness for you, Sadiya wrote, I dreamt of a stranger who had your manner of balancing your weight between your feet—what I’m trying to say is, Sadiya wrote, I’m forgetting you too—the time difference is to blame for the lack of textback, Julio insists to himself as he lies on his air-oozing bed-magnet looking at the internet, 1:31 a.m. here, 8:31 a.m. in Cape Town—a city prodigal of beauty, J. M. Coetzee writes, of beauties—and now Sadiya is probably eating cereal and fingering her phone while her cat Zen (not actually her cat, the building’s cat, ownerless, but she’s flirting with the idea of keeping him) grooms himself in the basket of New Yorkers, or, no, she’s away from the phone, maybe having a shower, yeah, she’s probably having a shower, a hot shower, maybe playing some Sade and toying with the showerhead and thinking of Julio, her head rolling back, her long wet neck stretching taut, moaning to herself, yeah, or, no, actually that’s Julio’s mom, in his parents’ bedroom, attached to his room at the hip, good for them, fifty and fuck-drunk—Jesus, Julio thinks as he reaches for the QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones on the passenger side of the bed and puts them on and plays white noise and reaches for the roll of toilet paper under his bed and folds some onto his bellybutton, apparating back to Sadiya’s shower, empty now, it’s 8:35 a.m. and she takes famously short showers (see Cape Town Water Crisis), so she’s finished, and with disappointment he picks his phone back up and pauses the white noise and in private mode googles “feminist porn” and looks for twenty to forty seconds at a video in which a married man reluctantly agrees to shower sex with his sister-in-law before he, i.e. Julio, handles himself and asks for forgiveness and thumps himself upside the head—Bad Dobby!—and for an unknown amount of time fails to fall asleep—I tried everything I could think of to calm myself down, Thomas Bernhard writes, but because I was so intent, working so hard without a letup at considering what to do in order to be able to sleep, I was undermining my own effort to relax—hours alone in my room wishing a “sleep machine” existed, Tao Lin writes, that I could use by pushing a button, to instantly fall asleep—thus Julio lies with himself on one side of his queen-size air mattress, leaking inexorably from some unknowable hole, lies on that softening slab pressing the sole of one cold foot into the warmth of his other leg’s calf—thank you for picking up so late last night, Julio emailed Deja, for describing all those calming scenes to me, I tried my best to pay attention but all I could think about was how I wanted to be with you in your dorm again, lying diagonally against you, pressing my cold feet into your calves, cramped together on your twin mattress, where when we wanted we could speak with just our bodies—I said you could snuggle, Louise Glück writes, that doesn’t mean / your cold feet all over my dick—Deja didn’t reply—I keep bending to look at Marcus’s legs, Sadiya emailed, they are so long, sturdy, beautiful, it’s hard to imagine them ever being hurt—it takes very little for Julio to imagine his own legs being hurt, short and chicken-y as they are—eat a cheeseburger, his mother often tells him—hit the gym bro, Irvins often says—but injury isn’t what he imagines, instead he imagines buff, white legs, the quads like Messi’s, calves so yoked they have their own calves—I spent the summer on crutches lying in bed with my leg elevated, feeling very sad, Marcus said slash Sadiya quoted in her email detailing Marcus’s sturdy legs, or rather in her email about going for coffee with Marcus, an email which happens to mention his sturdy legs, which probably have very good circulation, probably Marcus, if he and Sadiya ever share the bed, does not need to press cold feet to Sadiya’s calves to warm himself, and what is it to Julio whether Marcus and Sadiya share the bed, because Sadiya and Julio are quote unquote friends, and Julio is cuffed, Sadiya can fuck who she likes, Julio imagines her doing just that, i.e. fucking who she likes, i.e. Marcus, more often than Julio cares to admit, particularly in these the wee sleepless hours of the morning, though Julio does eventually knock out, not that sleep provides any respite, he dreams of the shower in Deja’s dorm, the water is soft and he is having a hard time rubbing the soap off of her, the wet fabric of his pants pressing against his thighs and crotch as if to seal the organic hotdog there contained, when his mother opens the bathroom door, somehow unlocked, just a crack, and says to him through the slit, “Yikes”—I’ve had it with this shit, Julio’s father says while hunched over the sock bin in the closet the next morning, it’s a black hole—can you turn the light off in there when you’re done, Julio says from the sunken place of his air mattress, kneading his eyes—sorry mijo, his father says as Julio closes his eyes again and when he opens them his father is gone, the light still on, so he rolls onto his side, away from it, and checks his phone, 7:57 a.m., Sadiya has heart reacted to his text about Twitter’s redemption, if only he could heart react her heart react—still on for 8 p.m. your time? he texts, neutrally, then sees that Deja, at 4 a.m., sent another meme, which he ignores, locking his phone and closing his eyes again, as if to sleep, but the birds siren and the light burns his eyelids, a jackhammer chatters its giant tooth, men shout, they’re boring holes into the road, the road has long been warty but the construction isn’t cosmetic, the piping is fucked, you can die from fucked piping if it gets in the water (see Flint Water Crisis) or something, that’s why one day years ago he came home to a big puddle of oil out front, like the lawn was bleeding out, the jackhammer chatters its fat fucking tooth on his forehead, on the inner wall of his skull—brainium, Irvins here interjects—trying to drill its way out, so Julio checks his phone again, when in doubt check the phone, 8:01 a.m., frozen fucking river, and opens Deja’s message, a meme: a two paneled picture with a brain on each side, on the left the brain is as smooth as two rolls of salmon sushi and captioned “my brain [grinning face with squinting eyes],” its attributes listed in the space below—1) smooth 2) no weinkls 3) cute 4) cant think = no sad—while on the right the brain looks like a brain, captioned “yuor brain [prohibited]” with the following attributes—1) BUMPY WEIRD 2) GROSS WRINKLES 3) UGLY!!!!! 4) THINKS! = SAD!!—how’d you sleep? Deja texts—why are you up so early? Julio replies—still haven’t slept, Deja says, my chest is imploding—the chest, Julio texted Sadiya last night when she asked him where in his body he felt desire—a horse has kicked open his chest, Sadiya replied, that’s an isiZulu idiom I love, it’s like wearing your heart on your sleeve—Julio heart reacted—I’m sorry, he says to Deja, deep breaths—hmm I hate deep breaths, Deja says, and Julio remembers the last time he told her to take deep breaths, or the time his mind hasn’t yet erased, which he belatedly relives whenever he stupidly forgets that she hates deep breaths and tells her to take some, that night on campus in her living room, the day she lined all the kitchen knives up on her bed and ideated—I wasn’t going to do it, she said on their way home from the dining hall—I’m so sorry I didn’t answer the phone, Julio said—it’s okay, she said, I wasn’t going to do it, I’m too scared—I’m just glad Christine picked up, Julio said, and that you’re safe, I love you—Deja that night on the living room couch, drunk in her bathrobe, her eyes puffy and red, Julio and her roommates seated beside her—deep breaths, Julio said, and Deja stood and stumbled to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of Nice! and chucked it at the wall, where the lid blew and the water spilled vertically—what’s on your mind, Julio texts—everything, Deja says—what did you do last night, Julio says—watched It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, Deja says, have you watched it yet—not yet but soon, Julio says—I won’t hold my breath, Deja says—Julio question reacts—you never watch my shows, Deja says—what about Normal People? Julio asks—your pick, Deja says—but I picked it for you, Julio says—not the same as me picking, Deja says—okay you pick next, Julio says, I won’t hold my breath—Deja emphasize reacts.

WHEN JULIO WAS A BUTTERCUP

Julio tosses the blanket aside and stands, throws on a pair of basketball shorts and slides sweatpants on over those, leaves the room, stops in the doorway to his parents’ room, where his mother lies on her side in the dim orange light, a prickly leg jutting from the blanket, eyes open—morning, Julio says—morning buttercup, Julio’s mother says as she pulls the blanket over her leg—how’d you sleep, Julio says—your father was kicking me, she says—one sec, Julio says, leaves the doorway and descends to the kitchen, where he pours a cup of coffee, which he carries to her, taking care not to scald himself—thank you, his mother says, propping herself on her elbow and having a sip—now I can be alive, his mother says, not that I want to be—Julio sits beside her on the bed, sets a hand near her foot—I love you, she says—I love you too.

WHEN JULIO WAS A SK8ERBOI

A couple hours pass during which Julio grooms himself as if for a date, showering for a criminal amount of time—forgive me Sadiya and Good People of Flint—then subjecting himself to the usual brushing and flossing and rinsing and combing and shaving and plucking, plus the insertion of Q-tips into certain cranial crevices, after which he chooses his favorite t-shirt, purchased with Deja two years prior at the Newbury Street Uniqlo, a long quote unquote skater shirt—he was a sk8erboi / she said see you later boy, Deja sang in line (—who were you in fourth grade? Sadiya texted—a sk8erboi, bullied, obsessed with Messi and Lil Wayne, Julio texted)—a skater shirt purchased alongside a Dragon Ball Z graphic t-shirt featuring Super-Saiyan Vegeta captioned COME HERE SON (a gift for his brother Irvins), while Deja bought a graphic t-shirt of South Wind, Clear Dawn, also known as Red Fuji, which she wore religiously, rarely now that she’s home with her parents and incapacitatedly depressed and chronically procrastinating on laundry, not so much because she doesn’t feel like doing it as because she doesn’t want to interact with her parents, specifically her mother—early onset is a bitch, Deja says—because her mother calls Deja a bitch any chance she gets, and her father is kind but spineless and easily roped into slash victim to his wife’s abusive shenanigans, so Deja doesn’t leave her room during the day, not even to eat—what did you eat today, Julio asks on Zoom—I’ve lost twenty pounds, Deja says, slim thicc—does not go downstairs to do her laundry, since the parents are always home, their quarantine lifestyle of slouching on the couch ingesting lethal mixtures of CNN and Modern Marvels precedes the pandemic, and Deja does not do her laundry at night either because then the parents complain that the washer keeps them up at night, or rather her mother complains, or rather her mother deputizes her father to complain—so Deja survives on the reserves of her childhood dresser, the cross-country shorts, the coding camp t-shirts—I haven’t worn underwear in weeks lol, Deja texts—while Red Fuji rots in her suitcase, though she was still wearing it those last few days she spent on campus, before absolutely everybody who had a home was sent to it, she, unlike Julio, had made the first round of cuts, had opted to stay on campus in the city, at that time an epicenter of the state, rather than return home—dude, Deja said, living with my parents will make me crave death—so she stayed and sent Julio a selfie, blue-gloved, donning Red Fuji and jeans, and clamped to her waist was a bottle of sanitizer she herself made—I keep that thing on me, the selfie read—and when she didn’t make the second round of cuts, the university having determined that craving death at home was not sufficient reason to remain on campus, she sent another picture, of the view through her window, what she and Julio woke up to all those days: the Charles River, its surface rippled orange and purple—my last sunset from here, she texted, I shed a tear—and along with his sk8erboi t-shirt Julio squeezes into the new not-even-to-be-seen-by-Sadiya skinny jeans his mother ordered him from Kohl’s, using his father’s Kohl’s Rewards Membership (the account being still attached to the phone number his father abandoned, or was made to abandon, years ago) as a graduation gift—here’s to killing the scrub aesthetic, you scrub, his mother said as she placed the order—thusly adorned in his sk8er boi t-shirt and skinny jeans, Julio unplugs his phone and noise-cancelling headphones from their chargers, pillaged from various locations throughout the so-called home—if you steal my charger again I’m going to fuck you up, Julio’s mother said—and gropes for his Casio under the pillow and straps it to his wrist—that’s a Rite Aid watch, Ade said—and descends to the foyer, where his parents are wrangling Fluffy into a harness—you look nice, Julio’s mother says—bien pretty, Julio’s father says—did you wash your hair today, Julio’s mother says—I’d hope so, Julio’s father says, what with the length of that shower—I’ve been cutting down to one a day, Julio says, but now the one is as long as the two combined—you took two yesterday, Julio’s mother says—yeah, well, I’ve been angsty, Julio says—it’s not good for your skin, Julio’s mother says, see, look, and here she licks her finger and wipes at a patch on Julio’s chin—Mama, Julio says as his father closes the front door behind them, already they are being dragged down the steps so Fluffy can pee in the patch of mulch around the bleak shrub out front—let me hold the leash, Papa, Julio says—I’ve got it, Julio’s father says, gripping the leash despite his cast—dude, Julio says—let him play the martyr, Julio’s mother says, he loves playing the martyr.

WHEN JULIO HAD A PERSONAL BRAND

I’m a one-eyed one-toothed oracle, Sadiya texts, you?—wannabe edgy earnest boi, Julio texts—you took so long I thought the ellipsis was your brand, Sadiya texts—our messages take forever because of the 8450.0268 miles between us, Julio texts, is my hypothesis/excuse—because my mornings aren’t your mornings, Sadiya texts, and time is topsy turvy, is my hypothesis/excuse—you’re a crackhead for that phone, Julio’s mother says—you’re one to talk, Julio’s father says—sorry I don’t give you my undivided attention at all times, Julio’s mother says—Fluffy! Julio’s father says, and yanks the leash, and digs his foot into Fluffy’s hip to punish her for making a break at a squirrel loafing on a tombstone, a squirrel unperturbed, which Julio photographs and sends to Sadiya—/that/ is your personal brand, Sadiya texts—when you say cemetery I think Mary Shelley Energy, Sadiya texts, but that looks idyllic—it’s like a big loop you can walk, lots of trees, flowers, silkworms hanging midair, Julio texts, I’d love to walk here with you—loved an attachment, Sadiya texts—why does it do that when I heart react? Sadiya texts—Fluffy! Julio’s father says, and yanks the leash, and digs his foot into Fluffy’s hip, as Fluffy has now lunged at a squirrel on a tree—abuse, Julio says—training, Julio’s father says—look, Julio’s mother says, pointing at a broken sprinkler poking through the grass, the water gushing, which Julio photographs and sends to Sadiya—how does this make you feel, Julio texts—bleak, Sadiya replies—Julio laugh reacts—who’s that, Julio’s mother asks—a friend, Julio says, tucking the phone into his pocket, its edge brushing against the perpetual hardness Sadiya’s texts inflict on him, intimations of a boner, like middle school all over again, his erection-management hub is fucked—empty your mind, Squidward says—empty my mind, Spongebob says—just got an order from the boss, Green-Visor Spongebob Boss says inside Spongebob’s brain-office, dump everything that isn’t about fine dining!—everything? the Spongebob clones of the brain-office say in unison—everything!—[shreds JELLYFISHING] [shreds CHILDHOOD MEMORIES] [shreds SPICE GARDEN TIPS] (the Julio clones in Julio’s brain-office shred VAGUE BONER STIMULI)—catch this, Julio’s mother says, dragging a cigarette, the other day your father tells me with a straight face that Irvins isn’t fucking around on Monique, ha!—I said no such thing, Julio’s father says, bending with a bagged hand to collect Fluffy’s shit and flipping the bag inside-out like a sock, I just said it seems like he’s spending all his time with Monique, so when would he, you know, who knows, maybe not—Julio’s mother blows raspberry, smoke jets from her nostrils—I’m surrounded by Cheater McCheatsters, Julio’s mother says, to no one in particular, then turns to Julio and says except you, my sweet baby boy—Julio retreats to his phone, just past 12pm/7pm, and asks are we still on for our 1pm/8pm call?—loved an attachment, Sadiya texts, LOVED AN ATTACHMENT—Julio heart reacts both texts—Fluffy! Julio’s father says, and yanks the leash, etc., etc., then Deja sends a meme, which Julio examines just long enough to determine which react is appropriate.

WHEN J WAS A SHINING STAR

Try not to be an idiot, Julio says to himself as he pulls the phone from his pocket and texts Sadiya call when you’re ready!—would you speak to a friend that way? Deja asked whenever he berated himself in her presence, i.e. often—don’t be an idiot, Julio says to himself once he bids his parents and Fluffy goodbye, it’s three minutes to 1pm/8pm, enough time for Julio in his QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones to stream Sadiya’s latest contribution to the collaborative playlist they’ve been keeping since Unmasking Historical Legacies—take you away / away / from the feeling of being alone—enough time to play it twice, three times, because Sadiya, as it turns out, is not quite ready—if she mentions Marcus, be chill, don’t let her hear it in your voice, Julio tells himself, thinking of the last time he spoke to her, a few weeks ago, how when she mentioned Marcus’s name, a horse kicked Julio in his chest, and though he hadn’t said anything especially cringey, his laughbox was fucked, Sadiya must have noticed—no stuttering, Julio says to himself as he turns his ringer on and re-enters the graveyard with the suspended silkworms, starting his loop, looping in his head the transcript (poorly transcribed in his diary after the fact) of the call before last, two months ago, one of his last mornings on campus, when he left Deja asleep in her room and walked through Riverbend Park for nearly two hours while on FaceTime Audio with Sadiya, there was some kind of marathon, people with numbers pinned to their shirts ran by—I keep thinking about my time in Cape Town, Julio said, I’m feeling very, I don’t know, nostalgic, I, well, I just . . . I know I was there for just ten days, but, and I know this sounds crazy, it felt like, it felt like home, and a big part of that feeling, I think, was you—I know some things are left unsaid but felt, Sadiya wrote in her next email, sometimes I wish those things were said aloud, but other times it’s nice to just know that they’re felt, almost too fragile not to be suspended, like butterflies flitting around the hammer of truth—so she knows, Julio thought, she knows and she prefers it this way, don’t get any ideas, don’t be an idiot, look at what happened to the last idiot who got ideas, i.e. Tacitus, subject of that hammer of truth email in re: oh noon, with the attached script starring “S” and “T,” the latter of whom Sadiya platonically pet-named T-Bird on an Instagram post (107w) in which Sadiya wraps her arms around his neck, hangs from him, while he squeezes her, bends her backwards, one arm around her upper back, the other around her waist, both Sadiya and Tacitus with eyes blissfully closed, basking in the sun’s soft tawny glow, their cheeks touching, her teeth beaming, Tacitus’s own tucked behind his lips—for your letters and lœv, Sadiya captioned the post—Meryl Streep once said every good actor knows I love you is a question, T says in the script, I thought it might be time I asked—and S, after impulsively, tenderly bringing a hand to, then away from T’s cheek, their faces probably blue in the streetlight bathing T’s car where it idles outside her apartment, asks him whether he remembers a family party from three years prior, whether he remembers the way, the special way, they made eye contact across the room, from their separate tables, how S’s girlfriend, seated beside her, said you’ve never looked at me that way—of course I remember that look, T says, like in Frances Ha: the secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about—and the text of this quote was underlined blue, hyperlinked, which Julio, idiot that he is, did not notice, Sadiya hyperlinked things all the time and sometimes, without realizing, or saving them for his future self, Julio didn’t click the hyperlinks, so it wasn’t until months later, when again he bowed his soft cranium to the hammer of truth, that he clicked this particular hyperlink and saw the Frances Ha monologue, not until months later that he discovered that secret world—I love you for that reference, S says to T in the script, and I’ve felt that way for you before, but I don’t feel that way now, and what if we date and split after a couple months and end up bitter or, worse, indifferent?—right, T says, the opposite of love is indifference—I just think I need to be alone, S says, figure myself out, besides, the distance, God, I mean, we only see each other a few times a year, I don’t even want to try that, and I don’t want to change my life for us to be together, maybe in a different time or universe but not now, T, not this one, I’m sorry—and these words, aimed at Tacitus though they were, pierced Julio’s breast, sliced clean through him, or maybe the jagged edge of the blade caught on the flesh during exit, yes, these words taught him then and there that there was no hope for him, as there was no hope for idiot-compatriot Tacitus—there is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, Franz Kafka writes, but not for us—Julio and Sadiya are famously /just\ friends, close ones, perhaps, or at least he thinks so—it is not a stretch, Julio writes in his diary, to say she is my closest friend—though he’d be mortified to admit his closeness, or imagined closeness, to her, for fear of its being unreciprocated, almost as if his closeness to her is of the kind you feel for a favorite writer, how their words intimate intimacy where there is none, though of course she is his reader too, they write each other, there must be something there, and besides, they have their origins to consider, the less-than-ideal circumstances from which their friendship not flingship birthed (see Unmasking Historical Legacies), circumstances absent from their ever-thiccening mutual archive, a history never discussed, not even when Julio has felt the implicit invitation to do so, as with the hammer of truth email, to which he replied (after first attempting a genuine letter detailing his history of infidelities slash the state of his relationship with Deja) with a cold, academic email about Joy Williams, but even so, the correspondence with Sadiya is not strictly intellectual, they email about things he feels, maybe foolishly, are personal aspects of their lives, parts he never, or half-assedly, shares with Deja, anyway, like everything going down with his brother, or his old dog’s death, but especially everything going down with his brother, things he feels less inclined to share with Deja as a result of having already shared them with Sadiya, not that Deja asks, or that he shares only with Sadiya to feel closer to her, generating what he fears is a kind of faux-intimacy, as if these things are merely invitations to a pity-party, channels to funnel his sadness into, like his brother is a sac to be squeezed of its empathy juice, obvious though it must be that his brother is not the reason he’s sending Sadiya playlists titled sad! vol. 1, sad! vol. 2, sad! vol. 3, ad infinitum, still, they are close, sure, Sadiya hardly ever speaks of her own familial dysfunction, but she’s written to him about her exes and semi-exes, that counts for something, and she’s asked him questions like where in your body do you feel desire, yes, these sorts of good things happened, and happen still—I am feeling seen and heard, he and Sadiya joke—but it’s true, she sees him, she hears him—and everything that he feels for her, well, he’ll quell the fuck out of it, okay, like gulping his own puke, or holding in his poop, all longing for Sadiya must be contained, crushed, erased, don’t be an idiot, you have a nice thing going, your inbox is like a giant net bulging against the weight of her long, beautiful letters—storage warning, ProtonMail writes—the clink of her teapot against a cup of Earl Grey last time she called—well-colonised gal, she joked—how light she makes you feel, that flutter in your chest, you fuck, that cheekache from incessant grinning, don’t fuck this up, so many nice, good things you could lose forever, or never get to experience, Sylvia Plath’s foodbot, for example, or those e-flux podcasts you can’t understand, but most of all the letters, the letters, the letters, like she’s a diary that writes back—God, don’t lose her because you can’t quote unquote have her—I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine, if I am to change this image, I must first change myself, fish are friends, not food—don’t forfeit dick control, you crumbag, you amuse her, she lœvs your words, not your legs, famously hates distance, you and Tacitus, distant bois, your alternates in other universes having their ways with her, meanwhile—would you like to go for a walk through the Gardens, M says in the sturdy legs email in re: oh noon, it’s such a good morning—absolutely, Sadiya says—she and Marcus walk together, maybe they went for a nice morning walk today, maybe they had a nice morning fuck too/as well—on Saturday morning, Sadiya emailed, I left the domestic bliss of breakfast in M’s kitchen to head to my place for a day of thesis reading—and now Sadiya, after a long day of thesis reading, sits on her couch, still wet, Zen in lap, with a freshly microwaved cup of chai, for an intellectual chat with her colleague, Julio, who has now looped the cemetery’s circle a number of times, he’s waiting, casually, for her call to come through, hardly thinking about it, any minute now, no rush, he’s chill about it, and if she doesn’t call today, that’s totally fine, he gets it, one hundred percent, she’s very busy with the thesis and these days he’s mostly just looking at the internet, he’s flexible, tomorrow works—earth time, Sadiya jokes, not industry time—and he will repeat this joke alongside the understanding/relaxed script he is preparing in the now almost certain event that Sadiya flakes—call from: Sadiya Kumar, Siri says—Julio fumbles his phone—shit!—recovers it and slides his finger across the newly cracked screen—hey! Julio says, can you hear me?!—but he hears nothing, only the faint hiss of his noise-cancelling headphones, whose Bluetooth connectivity was automatically overridden when he manually answered the phone instead of tapping the can on his right ear twice—just a sec! Julio says, holding the volume icon and selecting “Julio’s Headphones” as the output source, and immediately he hears the ambient whir of Sadiya’s apartment, he could listen to that all day, just knowing she’s listening to it too/as well—hello? Sadiya says—hey! Julio says, I can hear you now!—it’s so nice to hear your voice again! Sadiya says—the feeling is so mutual! Julio says (they speak! strictly! in exclamations!) and he means it, her voice is a dream, warm but rugged, there’s some loose gravel in her throat, she clears it, even her throat-clearing is hot, and speaking of hot, her accent (well-colonized boi)—tell me, Julio says, how are you?—I’m well, Sadiya says, I’ve been joking with my flatmate, saying, you know, I’m feeling like a night in tonight—Julio laughs—and what about you? Sadiya asks—oh tell me more! Julio says, how is your sister? doing well, very mild symptoms, thankfully, Sadiya says, thank you, and what about your brother? how are things playing out in the Peña nation-state?—oh business as usual, Julio says, casually, and it’s only when Sadiya leaves a gap that he realizes how short he’s being, like maybe he should elaborate—in what sense? Sadiya presses—well he’s just, Julio says, how do I put it, doing what he wants, going where he wants, seeing who he wants, and now he’s back home again, kicked out of the place where he was squatting, and instead of there being drama, there’s just resignation—ah, Sadiya says, I’m sorry to hear, and I’m here should you wish to talk about it!—thank you! Julio says, and likewise! then gropes in the dark for something, anything else to talk about, and what have you been reading these days?—been on a real Pamuk bender, Sadiya says, Marcus loves Pamuk—that’s wonderful, Julio says, half-interrupting Sadiya, while tugging at the front of his t-shirt to cool himself—yeah he just went to Turkey last year, Sadiya says, it’s all he talks about—how awesome! Julio says in an enthusiastic/chill tone, did I ever tell you about my encounter with Pamuk? he taught a class I nearly took, but word on the street had it he was a royal narcissist, can’t relate, so I opted out, and one day, a year later, when I was interning for the agency, I came back from shelving books to find him standing at my desk, on the side with my chair, chatting with an agent, so I awkwardly roamed around the office, pretending to do things, thinking all the while that I wished I had taken his class the previous semester, so that he could recognize me in front of my superiors, cry out my name as old professors do when they run into students they remember fondly—passion, Sadiya says, not ego!—famously! Julio says, I am zero percent dependent on external validation for a sense of self-worth—Sadiya laughs, less enthusiastically perhaps and that’s it, he’s fucked it, he moves to recover but finds that as soon as he opens his mouth, Sadiya does too, so their words briefly clash on the airwaves—no! Julio says, you go!—God this is triggering, Sadiya says, like a fucking Zoom seminar all over again, but I insist, J, you were saying?—it was really nothing, Julio says, I was just going to ask for you to tell me more about the Life & Times of Sadiya K—Sadiya laughs, newly enthusiastically, J, idiot-levels decreasing—I just went to the gynecologist the other day, Sadiya says, and—did they put the pliers in you, Julio says—yes, Sadiya says, a quite pleasant procedure—yes, Julio says, I hear great things about it—I asked Liam if he would drive me and he said yes, Sadiya says, but only because he is committed to living in a way that portends the best personal essays, and in the clinic there was a zone cordoned off with a big red sign that read COVID SECTION, and the Pap smear, famously a joy in its own right, was also a thesis defense, because the doctor interrogated me about my research—a woman’s work never ends, Julio says, not even on the exam table—I am feeling seen and heard, Sadiya says, thank you for your male allyship—my pleasure, Julio says, so did you write the personal essay? did Liam?—not yet! Sadiya says, but all was not lost, we talked about it on the pod the other day, life to art conversion rate remains at a healthily masochistic level, and besides, I’ve been working on a little play, some of which you read in oh noon—right! Julio says, I meant to ask you, how fictionalized?—ha, Sadiya says, Marcus had the same question, the transcript is rather faithful, except maybe my own lines—I have trouble remembering them too, Julio says, I’m always the blurrier half of a conversation—one hundred percent, Sadiya says, but yes, a play, though I’m having some trouble with it, honestly I’ve abandoned it, I was talking with Marcus about it the other day, since he’s writing a play in lockdown as well, and said I didn’t know what to write about, and he said I should write about this relationship—which relationship, Julio wonders, the one between her and me? surely she hasn’t told Marcus about me, but then, the one between her and Marcus? surely Marcus would not suggest she write a play about her relationship with him, but then, the one between her and T? so she’s shared the hammer of truth play with Marcus too—that’s sage advice, Julio says, the only way out is through—famously, Sadiya says, I think I will pick it back up, it just needs time—yes, Julio says, of course, and remember, I am desperate to read you, so please do share—and they go on this way for who knows how long, a long time but not long enough, never long enough, sweat pools where the headphone cans cup Julio’s ears, and in his armpits, and in his shoes, the toes sliding against each other inside his socks, the right heel sore from all the walking, and the cemetery is quiet, if not bare, a widow waters her husband’s flowers, glowing hot white in the light beaming through the gaps in the canopy, and when the conversation ends, as conversations do, Sadiya messages Julio—you are a shining star! she says, I haven’t laughed that much on a call in a long time—and though the same is true for Julio, he does not say so, he does not say anything, he just heart reacts.

***

Angelo Hernandez-Sias is an MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University, where he teaches writing. His work has appeared most recently in n+1.