Who is she? Her image claims the continent of your bed like a British flag penetrating the earth of the New World. You’ve painted her through a kaleidoscope: all edges, fragments, and shards of glass. Her untamed red hair and green eyes make her vulnerable recline read as a challenge; the bare edge of her shoulder demands a mouth, a tongue, teeth. Her knees curve inward, holding the possibility of unfurling. She knows. We’re looking. 

Standing in your bedroom, I am equal parts scared and aroused by the sea of garbage we swim in. Plastic bags and forks line the pathway to the three continents of your bedroom: your bed, your desk, your couch. In the oceans of debris surrounding these continents are fragments I recognize: crumpled papers, pipes, pens, aluminum foil, wine bottles, beer cans, corks, ashtrays, a stack of ten pound notes, a labyrinth of cords, and guitars in black cases wrapped in cellophane freshly borne from the airport. Paint brushes, paint, a mountain of clothes. A mirror taped together, showing you sitting at your desk arranging neat lines of white. 

You’re wearing a grey bathrobe, striped with yellow plaid. It’s the kind you would see any suburban dad wearing while holding a ceramic mug of coffee, fetching the newspaper, wearing slippers he unwrapped on Christmas, then shoved into the back of his closet until he needed them to keep warm. It’s the kind of garment that even you can’t pull off, and this takes me by surprise. I study the way your frame fills the seams on the shoulder, the way the hem on the wrist falls a few inches above your long arm. I will miss this, I think to myself. I’ve only been in his room for a few minutes. 

Unburdening myself, I place my purse and jacket on the floor, certain they will get swept away with the tide, and clear a seat on the couch. It’s me, you, and her. A triangle. A fragment trying to hold its shape as it drifts through time and space. Would you like some questionable Jamaican food? You look towards the floor, our eyes land on the unhinged mouth of a styrofoam container. I take the rolled bill out of your hand, inhale, and pull you towards the bed instead. She watches.

After we finish, you shrug on that undeniably paternal bathrobe, singing, purring. I know then that I will never know you in the ways I hope to, but to me this seems fitting. The feeling is concrete, the temperature of a cadaver, the color of frozen trash. 

I’ve left my signature in blood over your sheets. It looks like someone has been hurt here. Or, maybe someone has been born. Tracing the patterns, my eyes wander your walls. You have so many photos of yourself taped to the walls. I roll my eyes; I find it cute that someone so well-known needs a reminder of their fame. Like a post-it note, or an affirmation drawn in lipstick. I wonder what she reminds you of. I wonder what part of you she represents. 

I want so badly to exist in your mind after I leave this room. Call me sometime, I’ll say, before I get into the Uber that will take me to the airport. I’ll look over my shoulder and see you looking at me before you close the door, standing in your gray bathrobe. I will cry so hard in the airport that a security officer in hijab will ask me if I am okay, as another officer looks at me over her shoulder. I will count you in common objects: black cats and black birds all remind me of you; they all seem like a sign that you are there, that you may be thinking of me thousands of miles away, in the arms of another lover, under the spell of another drug. 

I want something real, I want something that I can hold onto as I divorce the gravity of earth. When you come back from the bathroom and shrug off your robe, I pull you violently into me. I sink my fingertips into your back and unstitch myself at every seam, hoping to swallow you whole. 

When I get back from the bathroom this time, your shoulders are bare and curved, you’re composing something in paper and ink. You pass me the page – you tell me it's a portrait of us in black and white. But I can’t make out the figures, what belongs to who? We’re shadows and ghosts, we’re loving and fighting, we’re figuring and writing two images of the same story.