From Soil (2025)

first it sleeps

Lëtzebuergesch

He was born on the coast of Brazil but grew up in a small European country. We met while living in the same London apartment building when I was nineteen. I brought him to a museum to collect one of Ai Wei Wei’s seeds. We spent four summers with his family: his mother interpreted languages for a living and insisted I speak German in the house. In silence, they all watched me slowly gag down a slice of a traditional meat pie with olives suspended in aspic underneath a stubborn crust. We carved our initials into a heart on the Coliseum.

I graduated at twenty, and he falsified his transcripts so he could follow me to an MFA program out West. He was caught, so I attended a less prestigious school to remain with him. He told me verbatim that my body wasn’t enough to satisfy any man’s primate (sic) urges, and we fought nightly after that. I left him for a local writer I met in graduate school, but we continued living together.

He slept on a blow-up mattress in the living room for two months, and one afternoon he pushed me to the ground in a crowded food hall. No one said anything, even though they were looking. Once, he did unspeakable things to me while he thought I was asleep. I still have nightmares about it.

The Rose of Tacloban

The local writer flew me to a celebrated New York restaurant where the foyer smelled like apples and the walls were crowded with expensive pastoral paintings in heavy gold frames. He proposed we make love in the bathroom of the Guggenheim. We stayed at his parents’ vacant condo by the Dakota and watched Barry Lyndon in the building’s private theater while making out on memory-foam beanbags. We spent New Year’s at a bed-and-breakfast in the Hamptons. The art everywhere was atrocious, and the gas-station bagel sandwiches were great.

He took me to Alinea, where I watched the chefs work behind glass like zoo animals; I licked rose foam off a leaf. After Here Lies Love, he told me I was like a prostitute between the sheets. I wasn’t sure how to interpret most of what he said, but he was a gifted science-fiction and comedy writer. We wrote bits together. He asked me when I planned to get my boobs done.

I left him.

Ivan Ramen

He had been the sort of student who excelled at everything. He joined corporate banking, wanted to die, and so he became a chef in Manhattan. He taught me difficult recipes and told me how much coke they do in The Industry. One afternoon he handed me my first zine. Then, one day, he disappeared.

Six months later he called from a truck stop and asked for a ride to his parents’ house. I initially said no, but then he offered to cook me dinner. We lived together for another year before he migrated west.

then it creeps

You Spit on My Shoes

He drew delicate converging lines on motorcycles and skateboard decks. His own work was the only art hanging on his walls, which made a pretty clear statement. He got into a fight behind a dive bar. He didn’t stop when I said no. I kicked him, and then he begged to see me again.

Cookie Monster Feeding Koi with His Bare Hands

He was beginning to make a name for himself in The Industry. We wandered through Luftgekühlt and watched celebrities puff their chests at each other. We spent time with Muppets. I had Venice Beach sand in my socks on the flight home.

I worked with him on commercial shoots, turning products so their labels wouldn’t appear on camera. I grew strong from carrying camera equipment. We’d lie in bed and watch The Sopranos. He insisted on facing the front door whenever we ate out. He taught me that Indian motorcycles were the best; I nodded my head, knowing Honda was superior.

I felt trapped whenever we fought.

He took me to a concert for my birthday and later backed me into an alley, barking at me through the glass while people inside watched.

Gabaghoul.

then it leaps

It Was Written in the Stars

He taught Science where I worked. We lived out of an ancient hatchback and spent summers at campsites in national parks. We skinny-dipped beneath the moon and couldn’t find our clothes in the dark. We climbed mountains and watched the stars. For a brief season we taught abroad together.

After I was hit by a car, he kicked me in the legs. One November night, he punched a hole through our bedroom window. He was too ashamed to repair it until spring, and the lakefront wind bit into my skin on winter nights.

I dated him because I wanted to know everything he knew, and when I did, I left.

Onion Boy

He wrote satire.

He was not funny.

The Professors

They were unlabeled chemical compounds gathering dust on a shelf in a locked cabinet. One cooled reactor tanks. Another planned satellite trajectories. Neither could navigate a conversation with a woman.

permafrost

Disney-Princess Pedigree

We first met in a youth orchestra, though he doesn’t remember it. He attended a conservatory for Viola Performance before leaving because of performance anxiety.

On our first date, he grabbed my face and kissed me for a long time.

Four months later, he proposed casually at lunch.

He talked so much that I barely spoke during our two-year marriage.

I took him through London’s museums. He was drawn to Fragonard; anything in a gold frame. At least we both loved the Barbican, and I showed him how I’d hide in the first-floor bathrooms to listen to the orchestra rehearse. We watched a contemporary composer conduct his own work. We stood before a quarter-hour of celebrity butts at the Tate. I wrote on a slip of paper, I wish this feeling would never end, and tied it to Wish Tree.

After I was sexually assaulted on my way to work, he fell out of love.

He told me my activism meant nothing.

When I was admitted to a hospital, he stopped answering my calls. When I finally reached him, he told me I had caused a breakthrough manic episode. He called the nurses with his own theory about what was wrong with me.

I sent walls of text.

By then, he had muted my number.