Fighting the Urge to Have a Cry Selling Watercolor Paints at the Denver Fan Expo
by Becca Downs
I am without reception in a convention center and one lover is without reception at a family reunion in Pennsylvania and another lover is without reception backpacking in the mountains with another lover. My insides slither and knot thinking of the unsynchronized ways I am loving. I have been known to dip toes into the shallow end. I’ve been known to dive first thing off the blocks. I am exhausted and exhilarated. Panting looks like smiling and often is. All of us feeling things we’ve never felt before, the beauty of simultaneous loves and bingo-carding this life. Somewhere I am a school teacher and miss meeting a funemployed ex-tech bro with new post-capitalist dreams. I meet a doctor instead. I am a political consultant and miss meeting an ER nurse. I meet a union organizer instead. I am a bartender and miss meeting anyone who sleeps during the hours of 2-4 am. I meet myself over and over. Romance fated by the stars of apocalyptic economics. Today, I am selling watercolors. Yesterday I ghost-wrote for CEOs. Today I am near-vomiting in love. Teenage hormones raging in a 33-year-old body sitting behind a booth of plant-based paints and trying to not think about what would have happened if yesterday I had been a receptionist. I consider letting tears drip from my eyes to manifest something real from what I hold inside. But this universe is already alive. One lover waits patiently for cell service and a phone call. The other had suggested playing hooky and for a moment I consider it. My heart beats out of sync with itself. One is steaming a hot shower before slipping under the sheets, the other is cold plunge skinny dipping as the sun alights trees in pre-twilight gold. Both receptive to my morning pillow confessions and inconsistent breakfast beverage requests. Both brailling this curious universe alongside me. Both tied to me with invisible cell tower cables that could fray or snap at any time. Both unreachable while I sit here today, and in every universe I fight the urge to spread my arms wide and release myself.
