Jasmine Only Blooms At Night

You have a very comfortable bed, I once told the guy I was seeing at the time, half-asleep in his arms. He was surprised: Oh – well, I’m glad, he replied, and he edged closer before letting his head fall onto his pillow, right beside mine.

We didn’t last very long, but every so often, I find myself thinking back to his bedsheets, wondering why I ever found their dark blue so homey. It really wasn’t anything special: the Target blanket he had miscellaneously picked out early sophomore year turned out to be a pretty common bedroom choice for Kerrytown. And yet, it felt as if the very sinews of his body blended into the blue threads: it was his embrace, clumsy, but ever so endearing, that I found comfortable. My clothes never smelled like him by the time I would get home. I sometimes wondered whether this meant I’d dreamt him up.

When my friend and her partner went through a rough patch, back in high school, she would ride the bus to his house every single night. It was an hour-and-a-half long trip, and none of us were even close to knowing how to drive a car, so she’d pack a bag and make the journey out. It just feels like everything’s alright when we’re sleeping together like that, she tried explaining.

By that time, the closest I’d ever gotten to love was a prank call pretending to ask me out, and I could not understand why she’d put herself through this, only to fight with the guy. Worst of all, she would come into class the next morning, clearly distraught, and would sit me down in the cafeteria to tell me that she kept imagining him cheating. She would dream of him cheating, actually; she would dream they’d fight; she dreamed he would leave. And she would wake up the next morning and kiss him. And she’d write poems about it– she’d never written poems before, and her frail letters echoed through her crumpled paper, but her words ached with a conflicting feeling: I love this person so much, I want to leave.

I’d always associated forgiveness with the idea of mending something. It seemed to me that it implied a dialogue, a negotiation of sorts: can you meet me halfway? And yet, the Latin root for the word, Perdonare, means “to give completely, without reservation”. I like that it does not come with compromise. My friend does too: she and her partner ended up separating, after four years on and off, and she’s never been happier. It’s the best thing we could have done for each other, she declares. Of course she still loves him, but they were never meant to last; forgiveness could only ever equate to letting go. She’s grateful she finally did.

The end of a relationship can often feel like a backroom: you can write on the walls all you want, you will not be able to sketch out a door that you can walk in and out of. And yet there is something so tangible about holding another person so close, wrapped in the sheets and narratives you have come to love, that makes leaving feel so difficult. We cherish the familiar. No matter how much clarity or tension the morning light might bring, we dream for the person lying next to us, praying they’ll want to stay, hoping we’ll be enough– and sometimes, we dream we could just leave. In our definition of a future, we find ourselves caught by a blur of past and present.

I have never felt bad about dreaming of an ex when I was with someone new. I find it harmless. All my life really, I have dreamt of visiting people I once swore I would never see again: in my dreams, I apologize to them. Regardless of whether this takes place in my grandmother’s backyard, the chipped entry door of an apartment, or the fuzzy mirrors of a dance studio, my subconscious takes great care in imagining the heart-to-heart conversations I was never able to have. I forgive wholly, devotedly. I dare to apologize. I ask for your love, I ask for you to come back. Sometimes you do; and sometimes, you kiss me on the forehead, and I know you mean no, and I forgive you.

My imagination soothes over the bumps my reality refuses to acknowledge. I enjoy the many endings I’ve gotten to rework; writing is useful in this way as well– a passing film to throw over any difficult passages of my existence, I write to reappropriate or challenge my circumstances. I filter and obscure. I circle back.

I have never been one to fight to make a relationship last, and I have not gotten back with anyone once we’d broken it off: I do not find it in myself to take the bus back and forth every night. Although I might tenderly cherish our shared memories, I refuse to allow our ending to become familiar. My comfort ebbs away when faced with the rugged ends of a relationship. And yet, it’s all I can ever find in my writing: I circle back and back and over again onto my collection of heartbreaks, spelling them out. Misplaced love is all I seem to think about. I dream of forgiveness, I write of it, and yet I find myself utterly unable to really ever understand it, until it’s too late; comfort feels ever so ephemeral. It feels safer to dream it. And yet I cannot help but wonder whether I have sworn myself to living in fragments of wishes and images, rather than a present I can actually live in.

A boy’s shadow spills out from his sheets over to his bookshelves. I enjoy being in his bed. I don’t know him very well just yet, and I wonder whether it’s the tension between the known and the unknown that I find so fascinating: it’s fun to fill the gaps. I marvel at this pair of eyes I do not recognize, even now. And yet I ache to make this situation intimate, if not familiar– so I pull onto his linen sheets, and I smile.

You have a very comfortable bed, I laugh.

WRITER TIARA PARTSCH GRAPHIC DESIGNER HANNAH SALAMEH