Sign in Subscribe

8a.

sometime around the present

Sometimes that second coffee makes all of the gaps between all of the notes in all of the songs in all of the world longer. In a car in 2017, I was determined to ask sister “hey, why does this song sound slower?” in the middle of every song. After the first question, she asked, measuredly, “second coffee?” Perhaps this sensitivity to the second coffee is a superpower, where on occasion you can make the world around you slow down.

Counterpoint: whenever I have that second coffee, my brain acts undesirably, mostly in the way of transparency with my insecurities. The night of the second coffee I often dream I’m in a circle of people and they are telling me they like my brother more than me because he is “actually” vulnerable with them.

I pace my room, putting a song on about the difference between the ways you wanted to change and the ways you actually have changed, and tear a page out of one of my decomposition books. I write a list/letter.

'Dear maybe a real person, maybe not,
The reasons I call you friend are:


  • you think there is such thing as 'objectively good' coffee, but don't demand others drink it
  • you make me feel like you cry more than me
  • you accuse someone of saying something that is the gambler’s fallacy and I know exactly what you mean and the person you are accusing knows nothing
  • you respect that in the car when you try to turn the volume down there are times when I ask you to turn it back up, and so you do turn it back up, and then you start to hum that song with a hesitancy that suggests “this is not what I love” and yet a soft vividness that suggests “but I wish it were” and sometimes just wanting to take that on is enough
  • you want me to listen to you
  • you don’t find it frustrating that I note down things you say and yet have never mentioned them to you again
  • you know not to mistake silence for introversion, or rejection, or anything else
  • you don’t equate telling the truth with love
  • and yet it is not because you’re reacting to your family of origin
  • and yet you are willing to say the things I should have said
  • whereas I have so small a heart, you have space in your heart for… well, everything… there’s even space in your heart for my grandparents’ dog from that story my mother tells. Even though it doesn’t exist, you still mourn for it'

I open the lid of the current year’s box, still pacing, before deciding to throw the scrawl in my paper bin.

Bouncing onto my chair, I turn the CD case from J. over on my desk. I feel its weight as it flips, inconsistently, the plastic of the case rattling where I fail to predict its movement, or fail to understand the movement of my twitching hands.

The coffee directs me to make a presentation.

Slide 1:
A bar graph of my family in terms of how much we love music? (where 0 = none, 100 = the most)

  • mum: 43
  • dad: 81
  • brother: 61
  • Joyce: 54
  • sister, circa 2018: 95
  • sister, circa now: ?
  • me: 96

Why did sister think it was important to document our tears at this moment in our lives? At that moment in her life? Was she unsettled by the way we were all relating to each other before I had even realised?

Slide 2:
Family dinner attendance percentage before and after (estimated, first number until mid-2018, second number mid-2018 onwards):

  • mum: 100, 99
  • dad: 95, 99
  • brother: 60, 80
  • Joyce: 40, 75
  • sister: 90, 50
  • me: 85, 85

Slide 3:
number of CDs purchased before and after (estimated):

  • mum: 47, 0
  • dad: 62, 1
  • brother: 28, 0
  • Joyce: 4, 0
  • sister: 111, 7?
  • me: 95, 4

I open the case. I place my shaking right index finger on the CD and timidly spin it, staring at the bird on the CD as it dances around the centre. I slide the booklet out, feeling the grainy finish of the paper with my left fingers. I didn’t love the words to these songs as much as I had wanted to. I see the note from J. I return the booklet to its position. My jittery hands return to the presentation.

Slide 4:
How good we are at keeping secrets?

  • mum: 8
  • dad: 27
  • brother: 1
  • Joyce: still collecting data, probably a lower number than it used to be
  • sister:
  • me: 51, probably higher than this

Slide 5:
Answer to the question ‘have you cried at a concert?’

  • mum: yes, but only once
  • dad: yes, but not as much as mum
  • brother: yes, obviously
  • Joyce: yes, but it was because my heart moved
  • sister: no
  • me: no

If you tried to plot all the versions of sister’s life onto a graph, is the cry list being stranded in a box in the home she is leaving behind the average outcome? Is there some version of her life where she still has the heart-shaped box sitting on her desk while she does important things? Sitting under her bed, itself important, no matter how dusty? Or is it always here, destined for the garbage, but for my finding of it?

And how does what I say - or don’t say - change those versions? Am I always finding the box, always keeping the list, holding it up to the light to see what it reflects about us?

I lie on the floor. My phone. A messaging app. My sister’s name. Typing. ‘hey, when was the last time you cried?’

8b.

2018, a journal entry

12.30
it’s interesting how certain people phase in and out of conflict over a lifetime, or over a single day.

wake to the sound of my dad, arguing. my phone tells me the time. the impression of dad’s voice carries even here, though I don’t know the specifics of what it is carrying, and what the intended audience thinks about any of this.

sister knocks on my door, subtly, says those two got home from the concert like this. she asks how I’m doing. we talk about stuff with J. a little. nothing new, but I imagine that’s in the way of most breakups, listening to someone you care about saying the same thing. however, she sees the two concert tickets on my desk, for a thursday in almost two weeks.

she mentions dropping dad at the airport at 9. did not know he was flying. she must have seen something flash across my face, because eventually I tell her the CD is still in his car. she offers to retrieve it for me. it is my thing to do, because I am the one who wants to hide it. she nods, slowly. she loves them, but she understands me. she closes the door behind her.

back in bed, I contemplate opening a note-taking app and typing. rising, turning the desk-lamp onto its dimmest setting, I write.

headphones in, alarm set for 4.

4.05
a failure. traversing the hallway: sister’s door slightly ajar, like it always is; brother’s door open wide, similarly typical, even though he’s no longer here; lights on in both mum & dad’s and the kitchen/dining/living area. dad on the couch maybe? mum working away on their budget? i turn around softly, immediately

another remembrance. doom. the CD is still in the slot. there’s no way to do this inconspicuously, because nothing is accessible in dad’s car if the engine is off. mum is winning the car argument, though I don’t know if it’s really about that, or simply more tension to add to the brother stuff.

nervously, I set an alarm for 6, delegating planning to my subconscious.

6.30
who does a secret belong to?

the CD appears, in its case, at the foot of my door.

would answering that question differently have changed J. and me?

now the CD is in a box, the news feels easier to share. control some information, limit the questions, help them to listen before they give advice. and yet… sometimes it’s not so much the secret, but those little details, the devastating ones, that we cannot give up, like when I overheard dad’s mum telling another human being how difficult mum found it to eat even mildly spicy noodles, and how the noodles were confirmation of of my mum's existence as mostly an embarrassing person.

imagining it, “and she broke up with him and she gave him this CD and…” and however that sentence ends, with hyperbole, with a lie, even with the exact truth, it doesn’t change the fact that the CD belongs to me, just as the noodles belonged to mum.

something else slips under the door, a note in the place where the CD lay minutes before. ‘I’ll attend the concert with you. Of course, only if you want me there, instead of another friend?’

but at the same time. you share what you care about with people you care about?

an alarm for 8? tell them, at the same time, before dad goes to the airport?

8.15
dad had already left

a note under sister’s door. ‘please come. thank you’

maybe I’ll go the the library, but for now, sleep.

the cry list • eight