Oh, I have bad news. I have a delicious morsel of bad news: I met a man. Unfortunately I cannot go to a party and lock eyes with a beautiful man without causing trouble. I was sitting on the couch in my winter boots. I was holding court. And who is this?
Oh who is he who is he who is he. He’s a tall man, he’s certainly a warlock, he has blue eyes and when he looked at me I felt powerful and bad like a witch. He is a playwright. He is here to direct a play. I don’t know what Lord Byron looks like but he looks like Lord Byron. Maybe Lord Byron had blond curls and long hands. He does now.
I’m in class pretending to take notes on Hume but instead I’m taking notes on him. Lord Byron I’m sorry you have a girlfriend back in Brooklyn. I’m sorry you met me.
I looked up just now and right into the gaze of Rob, the kid who always sits by the door and never takes off his backpack. He has sad soulful eyes and is always staring at me. Well, Rob? Here I am.
I found a paperback copy of Macbeth. This is the play he is staging uptown in some months. This is what I did at school instead of taking notes of any kind: in the margins of my notebooks I tried to recreate the illustration of a half-shaded face on the cover of my paperback copy of Macbeth. I drew the face of a man, Macbeth presumably, and then I blackened half the face with my ballpoint pen. Darker darker darker. This will prevent me from writing Lord Byron Lord Byron Lord Byron all over my notes.
After class I did not run to the English building to find Dr. Goede and ask him what to say to a man who is staging Macbeth to get him into my bed. But shouldn’t he know? You can’t get a doctorate in Shakespeare without learning this information, I feel. I should schedule office hours with Dr. Goede even though I hate him because he always calls me Alicia. My name is not Alicia. But I need someone to help me. I’m in a dangerous situation over here, Dr. Goede. What would Alicia do? Someone named Alicia would leave him alone. But as I said. My name is not Alicia.
He is subletting an apartment off 7th street. It has a red vinyl booth in the kitchen. I thought he might like it if I wore white socks and black Mary Janes. He did like it. Things are out of hand. It’s official: things are out of hand. I sat in the red booth and he took my photo. I looked at the preview on the back of the camera and saw my eyes shining with secrets from under my Zelda Fitzgerald hat. Girl, you got a secret from your mom. That’s what I would write on the back of the photo if I ever printed it out. You know, for my scrapbook.
I told him I felt like I was falling off a cliff. That is what I said breathlessly into his ear: I feel like I’m falling off a cliff. I was trying not to fall. That’s why I scratched him in long lines down his back. It didn’t work and I plummeted anyway: to the bottom of a black valley where he waited for me, full of spells.
I open my notebook to a blank page and write the date: 2-14-2008. Rob watches me instead of watching Dr. Morris. I look at Rob, he looks away. Today is Valentine’s day I write. Then I start making loops and loops with my pen until the loops spell out big wild letters like the writing on a deranged birthday cake
It’s my turn to read. I am playing Socrates in Plato’s Dialogues. Dr. Morris picks me to read with him because I can read like a normal person when I read aloud. But I stumble on the word humus. “What is that?” I say. Dr. Morris says “hummus.” “No,” I say, “It only has one M and it’s like, the humus on the forest floor? What does it mean, dirt?” We look it up. It means dirt. Dr. Morris and Rob both look at me like they want to crack me open like an egg and start licking me up raw. She can read, she can read, she can read, she can read, she’s bad. Jin always said that song was about me. I am a kind of obstacle.
I have been at 7th street. We pulled the mattress to the front room and watched Eddie Izzard do standup on an old TV. We didn’t want to get dressed or get off the mattress so we ordered takeout from Fortune Cookie to sustain us. To sustain our activities. When a man is so beautiful, finding his imperfections is a treasure hunt. I did a lot of hunting and found a lot of treasure. That’s not what I mean. That sounds gross. I was not spelunking in his body. I was mapping it. I have been a serious and distinguished cartographer. I drew little sea monsters to represent his oceans and on the land mass where the cities are I drew the building of him, its blond curlicue ornamentations and its placard from a lost century when there was still magic. Maps, wait, your girlfriend dancing in Prospect Park doesn’t love you like I love you.
I came to Canada. My beloved stepmother, less wicked than my own grandmother, died. I couldn’t be blood-related to such a pure woman. I didn’t ask for an extension on my annotated bibliography even though I had the most classic of excuses. When I got the call I went straight to the library. I can be a fuckup anywhere but school. This is my only law. In this way I am pure. I am a good student and a bad girl.
Before I came to Canada I cut off my hair. I asked for a man’s haircut. I want to look like a little prince in an oxford shirt. I comb my hair over to the side and knot my scarf at my neck and I packed men’s business pants for Canada. I stand in the empty street and hold out my hands in black gloves against the snow for my sister to take a photo. What am I summoning? When he sees the photo on Facebook he will just have to guess.
He showed me his notebook. He has to break apart a play and put it back together. He has pages of symbols, blocking notes like a choreographer. He is a choreographer. He is a magician. He is a director who tells people what to do and then he comes home and tells me what to do. He says “Read to me.”
When he lays on my bed his feet hang off. He looks whimsical on my quilts and flowered sheets, like I trapped the world’s largest fairy. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair is on my nightstand. I pick it up and read
I think I wore the wrong thing to see his play. This new haircut is hard to work with. I should have worn a shroud and a crown, charcoal eyes like an empress. Even though he was behind the scenes, his hands were all over the stage. I couldn’t bear it. The way he looked in his blazer, the bracelets on his wrist, his curls in the stage lights after the show. I think it was a mistake to take truth serum last night. I wanted him to be soft and pliable but we just fell asleep. The whole night was wrong. Our spells have worn off each other, and it seems I can’t hang on. Even if the dancer is gone—oh, Byron, I’m a dancer too.
We have been cruel to each other. I think it’s my hair. When I get angry I look like a mean man. He writes about it and I write about it. Each of us scowling into our Word documents, wine stains on the keyboards. When he puts his hands in me they come away bloody. Out, out, etc. We’re wary of each other all the time now. Maybe because I gave him 200 of my parents’ dollars and that made me resent him and that made him resent me. Maybe because he found my notebook of haiku. Maybe because he read this one
He’ll probably put me in his new play as a crone. I won’t know. I won’t go see it.
I have been refreshing the registrar’s portal all day and now I have it. My beautiful list of As, endless, undulating forever and shiningly down from a personal academic Heaven that I alone created. I did it. Also in my new refreshed transcript: Major 2 – Communication.
Dr. Morris was trying to get me to major in Philosophy. He said I had a knack. Just take one more class, or take Tai Chi with him, at least, he was saying as he handed me back my perfect paper. Maybe. Maybe if you were hotter. Maybe if the economy hadn’t just crashed, but it did, and my parents are making incomprehensible decisions, so instead of signing up for Philosophy 201 or whatever he wanted me to do, I marched down to the registrar and added a second major. Communication is a degree with which a business bro will hire you to do an office job. I guess that’s what I want now.
WOW Rob has just found and messaged me on Facebook. He is gone! Gone home to Boston! I should have told you when I had the chance. I think you are beautiful, yr Amelie haircut yr smart remarks in class. I guess I was a coward but I wanted you to know your cute southern smile filled the classroom. When I look at your photos now I get this stinging feeling
Oh, Rob. You should have said something. I would have gone on a date with you, I would go on a date with you now, I am done with the Lord Byron type. I need to learn to hunt for purity, pure adoration and no more artists. I am going to get a business casual degree and I am going to date a business casual man. If I close my eyes I can smell his dark ringlets coming for me on the breeze already. I can hear the faint notes of Bruce Springsteen songs, Hey little girl is your daddy home? He’s not. It’s just me here in my green house with my notebooks, my homework and my straight As.
Kaylyssa Quinn lives in Atlanta, Georgia. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, she studied English Literature at Queens University of Charlotte. Her poems have been published in Capsule Stories, Mineral Lit Mag, perhappened mag, tinywords, Thimble, and Six Sentences. Instagram: @kaylyssa.