Spun Sugar and Ice Skates

Love is ice skating for the first time and learning how to fall gracefully.

I went ice skating for the first time when I was eight years old on the frozen pond and it was there I learned not to fear falling. 

Years later I am trying to pull bravery from the recesses of my stomach where it has buried itself because my ice is wearing too thin and I’m afraid I’ll crash through. 

I’m melting like spun sugar on the lips of children in August and the mascara sticking in the corners of my eyes and I used to compare my ribcage to an icebox with a combination lock that no one could crack, not even me. Now that’s thawing too and if nothing solid remains I will be floating on a current of something that tastes too much like devotion and… I was never even ready for I like you. I love you is sticky honey that turns my veins into volatile rivers of sickly poison. My lungs collapse inward and I drown. 

My parents warned me not to kneel for the men in back alleys, not to soften my walls or accept their sweet dagger tongues and quick words as praise. I learned not to take secret packages or accept drinks from strangers. Not to be seduced by danger or addicted to the shallow ones who whisper lies into my skin. But Mother you never warned me that the most addicting and most terrifying unknown would be the one whose arms are like lullabies, whose eyes have memorized mine like road maps to my soul. Whose words are genuine and true. You never taught me to fear sentiment but I do. He is the safest thing I know but I am petrified by my own faults and I fear if I loosen my grasp it will all disappear. Mother he is the opposite of the horrors you warned me about but I feel just as out of control. 

It’s a bit like the loop in the roller coaster when your hands are forced from the safety of the rails but you’re pinned in one place and your breath is torn from your lungs with vicelike ferocity. They call me daredevil girl but I need to catch my breath. I’m dizzy like heatstroke and carnival music and swinging too high on the playground and the smell of smoke and the piercing scream of sirens. I’m dizzy like wildfire and he is the pyromaniac who does not yet know he is the source of the flames. I am starting to question whether or not I want to be saved.

The most frightening moments are the quiet ones. The light weight of his fingers on top of mine, our soft breathing, the gap in conversation no one tries to fill. Dancing in the middle of the afternoon to sugar pop songs on the radio. The clatter of dishes in the sink and him whistling off key. Each sunrise since we met has given me chills and I’ve been awake to see every one, thinking, yes, this is the beautiful world we walk through and I want our side by side footprints marking all of it. 

Maybe I’ll take him ice skating and we’ll relearn the art of falling well. And the sting of the wind on my cheeks will take me back to that pond, eight years old, spinning and spinning until my hands grazed the spun sugar clouds in the sky. Maybe I’ll stop tripping over his name. 

I feel like some days keeping him with me is like tugging on the string of a helium balloon. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and he’ll be a speck in the sky. So I’m sorry if I’m constantly writing his name on my hands in the shape of anchors and tying strings to my fingers, I’m trying to tattoo our devotion on my bones. And I don’t want to forget him for just one second or he could fly away. I’m still terrified of I love you. But I am learning to live for the fear.