Let Me Hold You, 2021
Malcolm T. Liepke
1. Early Summer
As I lie in my old twin sized bed, feeling crushed by my sister’s bed above me, I reach for the glass of water on my floor. I live in filth in the summers. My body sweats, bloats, and grows and my ego is tainted. I wish I could let go and be bright in the summers, but I just feel so dull. I smile and explore and I think I am joyous. When I return home, that feeling seems to fade. I miss my mother in the sticky and stormy air of Illinois. I miss my space in Oregon, untainted by my past, my old filth which seems to consume me in the summer. I feel layers of grime build up and I can never seem to wash myself clean. I wish to become a part of the Pacific and wash away, to relive the ending of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Her words consume me. “The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.” I understand her words when I am in Alaska. We go on the boat and I find
myself staring into the nothingness, feeling seduced. And instead of falling in, I return to my little filthy room and attempt to feel something. I am tired of being surrounded by numbness--my own and that of others. I want to feel, even if it hurts. But when I say that, I know I am lying. I am afraid, jealous, ill, and empty. I am filth. I am scum.
2. Summer Solstice
I wake in a dark cabin to the smell of sweat and boredom, a typical summer perfume. I’ve never had a summer that made me feel light and happy. I find the season to be a time of unrealistic expectations and a reality that never seems to suffice. My spring was filled with flings, sweet kisses, and freckles. My summer is filled with work, bonfire smoke, and an irritable depression. I have dreams filled with past lovers—the man who kissed my hand so sweetly when my heavy head rested on his chest and the woman who held my hand and let me touch her delicate lips with mine. They make my nights feel less empty.
3. Summer Love
I long to be nurtured. The same way I am nurtured in my mother’s home. She licks my wounds clean and wraps her warmth around me. I long for her affection. I long for any affection, but I seem to reject most. I don’t want to be touched because it makes me miss more, yearn for more. Yet I wish to be caressed in dark places, to be hidden from the light of day. I wish to lick the lips of someone who I barely know. I wish to be consumed so I can no longer feel what I feel now. But, I have learned to be complacent. I am learning to lick my own wounds.
4. Hot Girl Summer
A moment of relief passed over me when I awoke from a nightmare where my belly grew. I have an empty uterus and I am free. I am weighed down by my own fertility, yet I want to love someone in the way my mother loves me. I am too selfish for motherhood, or at least that’s what some think. Maybe one day I will want to grow a life with someone, but that possibility seems so distant and like another person’s future, not mine. I don’t feel worthy of motherhood because I don’t yearn for it like others. I wish to nurture like my mother. To help a person grow. Nurturing myself is the best I can do.
5. Summer Legs
The scar on my knee when I fell running past him mocks me. He glanced at me and I stared at him. A purple and red mark that needs months to fade. My friend's grandmother tells me it looks like a heart, a love scar. Her father shows me a similar mark on his leg, a shared moment that brings me comfort. He asks about me in a way my father hasn’t.
6. Midsummer Feast
How can I miss the taste of something I’ve never eaten? Those who I’ve tasted have been filled with ingredients that spoil my health. I wish to consume and be consumed. I long for someone to
scratch my scalp and pull my hair. To be reminded of my existence so I can smell the sourness of their breath and the filth under their nails. I want to brush their nails clean so when they scratch I can smell myself. My flesh under their nails, my filth in their filth.
7. Her Summer
The drive is misty and she unloads her anxieties. How can I make her feel good? How can I heal her wounds? Being needed feels so good, I want to kiss her and make her all better. I want to lick her wounds and hold her—I can’t. I stare. I get overwhelmed. Over intellectualized feelings fill my head and I get dizzy. I am an emotional statue mirrored by another.
8. My Summer
I weep for summer in the same way I weep for the boy who accidentally said “I love you.” The soft touch of the air on my dry and scarred skin soothes me and I dread the brisk wind that will soon harden my lips and erase my freckles. The coarse Alaskan sand coats my boots and carries
itself into my rooms—it lingers. Summer was not kind to me, just as his words were hollow, said out of habit. I feel most beautiful by the sea. I wish others could see me like this, like myself.
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