“I’m sorry that I told you I was Drew Barrymore’s sister. I’m not.”
An Apology
Dear Tyler,
I’m sorry that I told you I was Drew Barrymore’s sister. I’m not. I’ve just always felt that she and I would be fast friends. Thanks for the drinks. Sorry I spilled my whiskey sour on your friend and told him to suck it up.
Emily
What Heaven Looks Like
I believe in heaven. I hope my thighs will be smaller there. I hope I can abandon my ballasts. I want to ask questions—there are some things that aren’t right, like why people leave, or worse, why we don’t let them. I also hope Drew Barrymore can be my sister. I once told someone that she is, but that’s not true.
I needed to get that off my chest.
A Lesson
A waitress cried into my salad one day and told me that her husband is not the love of her life. I cried into my salad too. He’s a barber in Philadelphia now—the other man. She wonders what would be different about her if she had married him. She loved him in high school but convinced herself that she was too young for that—she didn’t understand enough of herself to know what the lies are that we tell ourselves. Now the lie she tells herself is that if you think you love someone, you do.
Religion
Dear Tyler,
Do you remember that time we got drunk and drove around Greensboro? Me neither, but I heard we had a great time. I think you told me you’d like to have my children, but I feel like that might be a problem. It was winter and we watched sleet out the window. You told me to let free my Dionysus, because I do not love stupid enough, because I smell like honeysuckle, because I will never learn to fall in love otherwise—we would have to destroy ourselves before we might know what it is to love. You and I were so tired of it all—winter so ugly in February. Washington Phillips sang, what are they doing in heaven today? And you were convinced it looked like you and me. But I hope to God it doesn’t.
Emily
