H.
Photo by Jailli
H is a selected piece from a collection of "nonfiction fairy tales" Cassandra Bristow has written titled Accidental Folklore.
***
It’s getting late and I am getting itchier and itchier. Wriggling and restless, my movements turn possessed, antsy rocking back and forth in my wedged combat boots.
I wait for a pause long enough that I can seize it.
“OKAY, EVERYONE.
I AM GOING TO HEAD OUT AND MEET UP WITH H RIGHT NOW.
WE ARE MAKING WISHES AND THROWING THEM INTO THE OCEAN TONIGHT.”
It all comes out a bit jumbled, crooked off my shaky tongue. H knows I’m slanted, both of us watching as everything tilts downward on this axis. There’s all this stuff falling I can’t catch, even though my hands are outstretched with hope, regardless.
H is really Heather but I call her H because I love her. I love her and she loves me, too — a mutual devotion digging deep into each other that I’ve never felt before, but that’s just H. No matter who it’s directed toward, H’s love has no room for question or doubt. It’s real because it’s long-lasting and it’s long-lasting because her heart is too big and fiercely loyal to provide anything less. I knew when I asked her to accompany me tonight, she’d say yes. It’s good I’m not going alone, and it’s good I have someone who wouldn’t let me.
H is my companion in a way that’s sort of inexplicable. She drives me crazy because she is demanding to no end. We see each other at least twice a week, if not more, but still, I wake to a minimum of fifteen text messages from her each morning. Audio messages and missed phone calls follow suit, all around the same rotation of taboo topics: love, skater boys and angel numbers. She’s asking me what salad she should get three times over in between phrases like “that’s crazy hot girl vibes,” and, “are you fucking me?” — her way of asking if I’m being serious (I always am). Yet, in spite of it all, here I am: enamored. That’s just how love works when you’re under its spell, I guess. It doesn’t matter the kind, either. You’re just bewitched by this oceanic feeling of love, a vast expanse of a thing.
H by my side makes this moment feel all the more precious. Tonight, we found our middle ground. My impulsivity spoke to her adventurous disposition, and a portal opened, pushing our bodies towards each other on the Far Rockaway bound A-train; Squished flesh condensed thigh magnetism in the post-witching hour subway solitude. As we shake and jerk, she asks me for a piece of paper, and I rip two blank pages from my current journal (an intimate choice since it’s three-quarters of the way to completion), passing her one. Our pens click in unison, poised to begin our wishes. Two messages were offered to one sea, the Atlantic, and flung into its foam.
REASONS WHY I MAKE WISHES WITH THE SEA
When I talk to the ocean, it always talks back, and in our conversations, I feel loved.
I believe that one of the most magical places to be is near a body of water.
In March 2021, during one of my most precious memories, I said farewell to a weeklong stay at Far Rockaway with my best friend by turning our backs to the night sky sea making wishes into our coins holding cupped hands before throwing the metal circle over our shoulders to land beneath waves of onyx.
They always come true.
The minutes are twisting by and it’s still taking me too long to clear my mind. I’m starting to feel like I’m running behind, biting my lip until the skin becomes stringy. H asks me how I’m formatting my wish, and I tell her it’s a letter to the ocean.
Dear Ocean…
I want to wish, but wishing as I’ve grown to know, it belongs to those who are worthy and that’s something I don’t know if I can convince myself I am tonight. My spine presses harder into the metal of the orange subway seat behind me, and a sigh curls in my throat. There’s a knot in my stomach I can’t seem to unravel, no matter how much my fingers may want to try. Extending my cursive to desire requires its eradication but still, I am stuck. All the lies I’ve told this week.
...My love,
my home,
my dream.
I come to you on November 5th of 2021 at 12:32 AM to make a wish…
I like writing letters. I used to write them to my grandmother during my early daze of college when the freshman year homesickness was all too much. Lately, it’s been love letters I scrawl across the page. The last one I wrote landed somewhere between two worlds. I have no knowledge of its whereabouts. In fact, I don’t know if the envelope was ever ripped open, contents spilling out. I really hope I feel like I know the ocean.
Does anyone know if a wish thrown in the ocean takes one to two business days to come true? I just looked up what phase the moon’s in and it’s currently new, so maybe things will shift toward my desires quickly. New moons are good for goals and intentions. Knowing that provides me with some cosmic comfort.
The pen I’m writing with is blue but really turquoise. It’s got a lot of ink left in it still, so my cursive loops smoothly across the paper as though I’m not at any loss for words; As though there’s no pang in my chest because it hurts so much to try and be vulnerable. It’s selfish to ask something of someone who really loves me. I look over at H who’s still leaning over to write her yearnings, body contorted to keep it all a secret. I really have to write something, don’t I? Let me try and find the words even though I might feel undeserving. So, I jot down a bunch of things and if it wasn’t a wish, I swear I’d tell you, but it is a wish so it stays between me and the sea. I hope you can understand.
Thank you for loving me too.
Love,
The next time I look at H, she’s curling her wish into the shape of either a small scroll or a massive cigarette. She holds it gently while fumbling around in her pocket, pulling out a lavender ring. It’s from this night when we took shots from strangers and later realized they were laced, because one swallow got us all types of sloppy, wobbling down the street and stopping in three delis just to get quarters for the prize machine containing rings. Mine is silver with an amber gem set in the middle, big and camp when and where it sits on my finger. H slides her wish into the ring and tells me her center jewel fell out, so now it’s stowed away in a treasure box. The paper fits perfectly in her ring’s exoskeleton and with envy, I’m fumbling through my bag, looking for a clasp that will hold my wish together. My only option is this white barrette and I take it, clipping my words together so they swirl as they touch.
By 1:00 a.m., we’re off the subway with tangible wishes in our hands. November pinches my cheeks until they’re stained red from a wind that’s different closer to the water. Our feet hit the concrete, soon-to-be sand, and H immediately speaks to the silence. We talk about the stars because out here you can see enough of them to guess a constellation. We both spend a good minute marveling at the sight. I tell her I think I see Orion’s Belt before we call it quits on looking upward, bowing our heads to look at the beach ahead. A shiver flinches through us both once we reach the waves carrying this whipping wind. It’s colder here, but we both expected that. At least Rockaway’s got so many street lamps lit that the incline is easy to navigate.
We’re in front of the new moon’s ocean, docile from low tides. Sandbanks and water are visible thanks to light pollution, rocking back and forth purposefully. It’s dark enough that the water looks black. We walk towards its edge as though the icy water won’t try to lean down and kiss our shoes. H screams when it does, but our hands are entwined with wishes crammed between our shared fingers and that makes it easy to drag her towards the first bunch of rocks I see. We have to be closer to the sea without swimming, I explain. “Are you ready?” She nods and exhales harshly, checking to see if her breath will crystallize. It does.
I jump up onto the comfortably visible rocks and glide down their flattened pathway something in between ease and purpose until I have to watch my step. Low tides translate to slippery since rocks once kept mostly underwater are now above the surface. There’s a moment where I teeter enough that I could have fallen into the almost winter waves but I catch myself in the nick of time. Shoes hitched just right against the grooves of a slimy stone grant me the chance to turn towards the lulling sea — my ocean and her quiet lullaby. She wants to make me smile tonight. I do, and I’ve got the urge to sing to her in reply. If I was alone, I would.
I shut my eyes and let the numbing weather wash over me. I couldn’t focus my best before, and maybe that was alright then, but I’ve really got to now. My chest rises then falls — both in preparation. H is humming to herself — I realize, it’s the only break in our soft quasi-silence. For someone so talkative, she says nothing about my kinship with the water, only watching it unfold and watching as I unravel. My arm raises with the wish almost of its own accord, the curled-up paper clasped inside my palm.
Backward first, brain in mid-air searching for an incantation —
✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
STARS & SEA OF WINTER’S NIGHT,
TAKE MY WISH & BRING IT TO LIGHT!
✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Success.
Forward second.
A tube of tentative hope,
I watch spin through the air.
Spinning until it nose dives in between a rock and a pool of shadowy water. That’s it. All done.
The muscles in my arm are still buzzing from force. I’m crackling with magic, already waiting for some sort of shift I can attribute to the ocean’s own inexplicable ethereality. I turn to ask H if she’s ready to go, but I see her still clutching the paper, eyes wide and expectant like she just witnessed a miracle. I am tempted to ask what she saw, but I hold my tongue. Instead, I offer her a nod of encouragement and watch as she follows suit. She closes her eyes, whispers to herself and thrusts her arm forward in a forceful motion similar to mine. We both turn our eyes to watch her airborne desires as they take the inevitable plunge. We pause, waiting for the plop of confirmation that her wish made an impact as though we’d hear one against these waves and wind. One more breeze suffices before we turn to look at one another. H is grinning at me widely.
“I call the ocean ‘sea monkey.’”
Climbing off the rocks proves more precarious than getting on had been, so by the time we’re back on the sand, our bodies are drooping with fatigue. A blanket of exhaustion wrapped around us both but still we feel complete, our hands once again entwined together. That night, I went home, curled up under H’s covers before she got there, belly full from a post-beach excursion to the deli — chopped cheese sitting in my stomach while my body slowly melted in her bed.
H joins me at long last, looping her legs through mine. That’s our classic form of comfort, our ritual contact of skin. It’s something she does when I’m really sad, and she knows it. With her, I’m safe like that, and I know it. I know that I can always wake up next to her if I wanted to. No matter how vast the abyss of bed sheets we’re both entangled in, I can reach her, stretch my legs out and reach the warmth of her limbs as they meld into mine. No matter what, I can always rest.