Alison Rosenberg

CRYING AT THE MET IS MY LOVE LANGUAGE

It never felt quite right. Sitting criss-crossed
on a silly carpet, I learned that you can have

two different emotions at once, and that
doesn’t make either one of them less true.

I recall this when he tells me that I made him
cry today, for the first time in a decade. I like

to think that he’s referring to the same
type of tears I shed when I spend too

much time in the Ancient section,
falling in love with all the people

who wore emerald necklaces and
treasured their little sculptures of animals

so ardently that the trinkets are still
perfectly preserved, some five thousand

years later. But that doesn’t sound right,
does it? On that polka-dotted carpet I also

learned that it’s important to make people
happy − so now I try to find ways to make

my anxiety-induced indigestion seem sexy.
I can’t help myself. The tattoo on my ribs,

there just to revel in the fact that no one
can take it away from me, will be gone

with my skin eight to twelve years after
I die. The flimsy plastic that encases

a roll of toilet paper is lucky: it will last
up to a thousand before it disappears

on its own accord. Styrofoam never
has to biodegrade. When a new

generation, dewy and curious, builds
their own museums, I hope they find

the plastic banalities that we threw at
each other in fits of laughter. If I’m

lucky, they’ll recognize those scraps of life for the
obliterated moments I wanted them to represent.