" the world is lazy,

Dear Samantha,

I’m sorry, we have to get a divorce. I know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter, but let me explain. It’s not you. It sure as hell isn’t me. It’s just that human beings don’t love as well as insects do. I love you… far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failing of our species.

I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.

I know you would never do anything, you never do, but…

I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.

Did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain? It destroys the receptors that receive pheromones… sensing the change, the male fly does the same. When two flies love each other, they do so hard that they will never love anything else ever again. If either one of them dies before procreation can happen, both sets of genetic code are lost forever. Now that… is dedication.

After Elizabeth and I broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together. Like if I knew what pots were mine, like if I knew which drapes were mine, somehow the pain would go away.

This is not true.

After two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down. While he still has control over his motor functions, he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly to his lover like a gift. She then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes, spooning every morsel into her mouth. She wastes nothing. Even the skeleton goes. She does this so that, once their children are born, she has something to regurgitate to feed them. Now that… is selflessness.

I could never do that for you.

So I have a new plan.

I’m going to leave you now. I’m going to spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices. I hope you do the same. I will jay-walk at every opportunity. I will steal things I could easily afford. I will be rude to strangers. I hope you do the same.

I hope reincarnation is real. I hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures. I hope that we are reborn as flies, so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.

She is a lopsided soliloquy. A wounded symphony played by an orchestra of her family’s “I-told-you-so”s. A tattered woman who bleeds like an oak tree. Her life story is just a sandpaper love song written on a napkin full of all the reasons why no one should ever try to hug the rain. You always end up soaking wet and by yourself.

She: a rusty faucet, dripping self esteem that falls quicker than short skirts in motels when the sun blinks for too long. You see, when confidence hits the ground, it echoes like sin in a room full of God, and I could hear her coming a mile away. She has violin strings for legs, a graveyard of awkward treble clefs buried in her knees and I can see the suffering inside of the concert of her walk.

Her footsteps: they sound like the ignition to a father’s car the day that he decided that he was too thirsty to pour water on his own seed so when she calls me “daddy” I never really get excited because I know that it’s just the title that she gives the branches in her life that are destined to be abducted by the wind.

She comes over on Wednesdays. She walks into my room like a question that neither one of us has the courage to ask. Y’know sometimes, words, they get too heavy to sit on the ivory pedestals that we’ve built inside of our mouths. Y’know sometimes, our actions, they join hands and they become behaviors that are too complicated for lips to say out loud, so instead, we just liberate our flesh letting skin speak on our behalf, the language of those who are just as afraid of commitment as they are of being alone and we speak it like it’s our native tongue.

Honestly, I can’t tell you her favorite color… her middle name… or what her face looks like with the lights on. All I know is that we are both allergic to the exact same things: compliments… the word “beautiful”… and someone saying “I love you” with arms full of acceptance and sincerity on their breath.

Sometimes, I wonder what she carries in the luggage underneath her eyes. Sometimes, I-I wanna ask if those bags ever get too heavy for her face. But instead, I… I let those questions sandcastle inside of my stomach. I amputate the parts of me that have grown fond of her smell.

I wait until she leaves.

I wash my sheets.

And I think to myself, “most men would be proud of something like this.”