I am tired of the arithmetic. This cold, calculated math of “getting to know” is a violence against the instant. We sit across from one another like statues in a museum, exchanging polite, hollow words that are nothing more than dust. A date? No. It is a programmed ritual, a slow suffocating under the weight of a table that separates my knees from yours.

I do not want the “across-the-table.” I want the floor.

I want to eat pancakes in the dirt of the everyday, watching a flickering screen that means nothing, because the only thing that is—the only reality—is the vibration of your voice against the silence of the room. I want to be drunk with you in the street, laughing at the masquerade of others, those poor souls hiding behind their masks of “first impressions,” terrified that if they show a fragment of their true selves, the world will shatter.

Give me the raw meat of your life. I do not care for the route you take to your office; that is a ghost’s concern. Tell me instead of the day your dog died and your legs wanted to carry you away from your own skin. Tell me of the fist you swung to defend a friend—the precise moment you felt the bone of your hand meet the air. Tell me of the first time your heart broke and you realized you were made of glass.

I want to touch the thing that is you before it has been polished by social grace. I want the “deep stuff,” the unbearable stuff, the pulsing now. Do not give me your commute. Give me your blood.

©️Beatriz Esmer