Student Submission: Euphemisms
Emma Buckley is from the Salt Lake area. She is a junior at Utah State University and is pursuing a major in English with a creative writing emphasis. She is on the staff of USU’s literary magazine, Sink Hollow, and hopes to one day be an author.
I lay with you in the darkness and though I feel your arm on my waist I can’t see your face. This makes me braver, but not bold enough to stop speaking in euphemism, in metaphor.
The album you chose for us to fall asleep to was one of my favorites, a concept album about a painful relationship.
My arms are around your neck when I say in a careful, quiet voice, “You know… this is a breakup album.”
You say, “No, it’s not, they love each other.” and I reply, “Silberman wrote the lyrics about a breakup he was going through. He and the girl learned to hate each other.”
“How do you know?” you say, almost hurt. I lay silent, refusing to say words that would shatter.
I didn’t know but I could guess.
In a family of volatile, bleeding wounds one learns to love words with low stakes, and builds a lexicon of “don’t mind me – umm could you please – no that’s okay –” and other pliant sounds, to be indirect. It bothers them; they prefer bickering to small talk.
I prefer the quiet kind of disconnect.
So I construct a self out of stories. It is a way to exist without disturbing anyone, a way to open up without having to suffer for the sin of doing so.
Metaphors are easiest. I could write “I’m still lonely when I’m with you” but that’s too blunt. “You can tell us you’re lonely, but it would be much more interesting if you externalized your emotions.” an author said.
“This feels onesided” accuses you of laziness. “I think you misunderstand me” accuses you of stupidity. So I don’t talk about you. I tell a story about a tree, or a wall, or an album, and hope you see yourself in the safe shapes I’m making for you.
I look down as my mom’s hands clutch my shoulders. She’s saying “Look at me – it’s okay to cry – why won’t you cry?”
Tears would only make sense if I used them as a form of expression, and my mind was too frayed to create a narrative, a thread through the emotion to provide relief.
She shakes me a little, as though trying to hear if whatever I’m hiding will rattle.
Afterwards, as my jaw ached, I realized that anything would have been kinder than my stark silence.
And we’re still laying in the darkness, we must have dozed off. When my eyes open, the album had started over, but that’s not what woke me – it was the sound of footsteps, ascending the stairs.
Earlier, you told me your mother comes in to feed the cat before her early morning shift. But I’m too sleepy to think, and all I know as I look over our bare bodies, washed out and pale in the orange light of the streetlamp, is that I’m not supposed to be there. I shake your shoulder, cover me, wake up, please, someone’s here…
You are too far away to notice, and the footsteps are too close for thought. I cover my face with the blanket as the light flicks on.
I wait, her eyes searing my skin. I’m acutely aware that while my identity is hidden, my form is not. My anonymity, my indirectness, did not prevent my presence from hurting her.
After that slow stretch of eternity, she sighs, long and sad, and turns out the light.
The sky turns grey and I’m wondering if she’s trying to forget my shape, if she hopes I was a fatigue-inspired mirage, a coincidental trick of the light – or if she’s lamenting the fate of her godless, fornicating son, and the nameless, faceless sluts he sleeps with.
Either way she saw what she wanted to see, and I didn’t know which narrative was worse. I saw myself as she did, only my face covered, grublike and pale in the manufactured light. I was silent, I was nothing she knew, and even so, her sigh grieved.
Stories are often sublimely beautiful, comforting; and for that reason, they are often disregarded as anything but fiction.
Maybe, in the early lemon light, I’ll grab your glasses for you so you can see me clearly when I ask if I can tell you something. I won’t make it a story, and I’m sorry if it hurts.
To submit a poem or piece of creative writing, email life@usustatesman.com