Member-only story
The Liquid Border
A meditation on memory, language, and the quiet unraveling of identity
How many thoughts can fit into a single act?
How many women can fit into one body?
How many in a lifetime?
Am I willing to embrace them all?”-MARGARITA GARCÍA ROBAYO, First Person
I look around me. A solid wood table with black iron legs; a laptop and an iPad; a desk; several plants; a record player and a collection of records — some inherited, some bought, some gifted (by him), they are all mine.
He was mine too; that’s what he used to tell me: ‘I’m yours.’ But not anymore. Now he will belong to someone else, maybe in Switzerland, in Germany, in Belgium, or Spain, with someone new to whom he’ll say, “I’m yours,” or perhaps, “I’m yours too,” or “Now I’m yours,” or “I was always yours,” trying to mend the present by rewriting the past.
I, on the other hand, don’t belong to anyone. Not even to myself. Certainly, I own a few things: some scattered poems on a blog, two half-edited compilations, a few texts stored on my computer that I occasionally submit to contests, as if a single leap could catapult me to another star.
