Prevarication: to speak or act in a dishonest way
I wanted to clean the dishes. I wanted to take every dish we shared and dirty it so foul that I had to scrub for days to make it clean, till my hands were so shriveled and white and gummy I could shred layers of skin back with my nails. I wanted to dry them till they shrieked, till they were new again, and stack them up beside an empty sink so you would know that I was someone different. Someone you hadn’t known before.
I wanted you to find my floor beneath soiled and forgotten clothing, aimless papers, unfinished canvases and tiny empty boxes, so that you had a new surface to lay me down upon. I wiped every shelf, moved every book, washed every shirt and changed the sheets, so you could see that I was someone different. Someone you hadn’t seen before.
And then I wanted to be pretty, so I ran a bath for queens, made hopeful bubbles that floated high in the hot steam. I roughed my skin pale and shaved every hair, every part of me hidden I hoped you’d find. I wanted to be smooth, so instead of a towel I covered my body in lotions and stood completely still, arms high and reaching, legs spread, and waited for the fog to clear, for my body to dry on its own, for my skin to capture and steal every spot of moisture my intentions could muster, so that when you found me I would feel like someone different. Someone you hadn’t felt before.
I have lied to my teachers, to my mother, to ones I have loved. I have told prevarications that feel so real you could scrape the wax on the apple. I lied to you for weeks. I became who you wanted; I looked just like her; I moaned by your slightest touch. And with my curse you fell into a place deep inside me, the home I had slaved over making you. But on my way to meet you there, I found, once again, I could not lie to myself, there exists no fabrication convincing enough to change me.
There are dishes in the sink, piles of clothes our sleeping dogs lay upon, stacks of unfinished poems, hair on my legs you could twist, and the fridge is bone dry. I lay here on the bed, cold and fearing the mess I have made, while you nap over there in the dark on the couch, at home in a house which looks so different from the one you first moved in to. But you loved me then and it was everything you wanted, and so you wait for someone different. Someone you thought you had a hold of once.
