February 27 Sasha Hramova
My right arm aches, excruciating from palm to shoulder. And my cheek, it is cakey and tight. Something is holding my top and bottom lashes together and I rub at the crust. They are stuck, glued, and I pull them apart slowly so not to rip them from my lids. Sasha Hramova
There is something on the coved living room ceiling, a spatter of dark red on the perfectly bisque surface.
Wine? No. Not wine. Sasha Hramova
December 2
On a frosty December morning, I woke to find Isaac’s right knee attached to my left knee.
I had tried to push him off my side of the bed and he made an attempt to roll over. It felt as if someone had poked me with a lit cigarette a few inches beneath my kneecap. Sasha Hramova
I sat up and stared at Isaac then frozen and propped on his elbows, sinking in bedsheets. Our legs rested side by side on the fluffy duvet blanket, still and stiff from long sleep. Our knees were connected, and there was a narrow strip of skin between them that wasn’t there before.
He tried to pull away and I squealed.
“We merged.” His eyes were puffy and he blinked.
It was our eleventh month together. For the first time in my life, I had a strange but comforting sensation that everything was just right, like I finally didn’t want to protect my space.
They say it can start at around seven months. Earlier for some. We held out pretty well, then.
Breakfast went by in silence. We sat side by side and ate our oats. Just like any morning. I stirred my coffee and Isaac placed his lips on my cheek for a kiss. Then he gently grabbed my chin and turned my face to face his.
“How do you feel?” Sasha Hramova
“I don’t know. Like I’m losing my leg?” I looked into my coffee swirling on its own.
“I promise to take care of it.”
“That’s not funny at all.”
“All right. I’m sorry.” He wrapped his warm arm around my waist and pulled me closer. “Didn’t you tell me about someone who went through this too?”
“Yes. It was Angelina. And that’s why I feel like I’m losing my leg. She and Oliver were getting attached in all sorts of spots. Then they stopped having sex. They had to seek help if you know what I mean… Guess what? It didn’t help. It was too late. Better not get there at all.”
“Well, I’m not completely mad about it right now. I get you all to myself.” Isaac went silent for a moment. The morning sun reached the table and was inching into his empty bowl. “Should we schedule it? Before it’s too late?”
There was no point rushing it. We had to prepare ourselves mentally, and not during the holiday season — no, sir. January would be perfect.
December 24
The sun was high in the clear sky. A stream of icy air sipped in through an open window. Our desks were side by side, of course, our chairs touching.
Isaac’s fingers clacked on the keyboard. I was sketching a beet wearing a yellow dress and pink shoes, a children’s book about vegetables.
“I want to cancel it,” I said.
The clacking stopped. The beet lady looked at me, surprised.
“Are you sure?” Worry on his face. I glanced at the dance shoes stuffed into a basket in the corner, the battered leather soft and rejected.
“The casting for Heavy Rain was last week. I missed it anyway.”
“You’d be able to train for the next year.”
“It’s so far away from now.” I squinted. “Some people get detached without surgery. You think we can’t do it?”
“I’m sure we can, but what if it takes forever? You won’t be able to dance.”
“I thought you liked that we are always cuddling now.”
“I love it. I just want to take care of us.”
My anxiety was a tenacious creature but she didn’t survive in close proximity to Isaac.
That evening, we cancelled the surgery.
January 19
“Want a coffee?” Yawn.
An early hour of a gloomy winter day. Last night’s dreams were still in the air, fluttering hastily across the room into the morning dark of the city.
We had merged from the knee to the hip bone. All the way up. It was harder to move, dress, or take a shit. But it was warm, snug, safe.
The cold light of Issac’s phone screen flickered on his face. His fingers moved over the keyboard. My stomach twisted with every ‘ding’ of the blue message bubbles. They made me nauseous.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just replying to a text. Coffee?” He quickly put his phone down, turned and kissed me gently.
I glanced away. “I’ll take a coffee.” Pause. “Why are you always texting?”
Silence.
I reached across my pillow with my right hand, ignoring the lump that snagged in my throat, and grabbed the water bottle from the bedside table, forced a sip.
Isaac crawled on his back, legs first, to my side of the bed, and then, together, we pushed ourselves up and standing on the floor.
The coffee was hot and sticky, an earthy smell that made my insides draw tight.
“It’s a new sort I ordered, do you like it? It should have chocolate notes,” Isaac took a gulp.
My tongue was burning, my eyes too. I tried to swallow. So strange. Why did I feel like crying? “It’s good,” I said.
“I love making coffee for you.”
Warmth spread in my chest and I took another sip of the scalding liquid.
It was okay, I thought. Isaac was there, by my side, and he made my morning coffee for me. It was okay.
February 26
“I love when you wear this skirt.”
Isaac’s right hand was on my thigh; the other clutched a bottle of Bordeaux. We were sitting on the couch, side by side, in our living room.
“That’s why I put it on.” I lay my head on his shoulder, a routine movement that had become comfort.
Isaac pulled the cork with a lazy “pop” and poured the scarlet elixir into two glasses.
We cheered and drank. Then we drank some more.
“We needed this break. Work has been a lot.” He leaned back and I was pleasantly pressed into the couch.
My white denim skirt was cutting into my stomach, making it hard to breathe. I had it tailored so I could wear it while our legs were connected, but the waistline did its duty. It had been a couple months since I danced or moved my body in any way at all. I also loved corn chips, so there was that.
I hated my favorite skirt.
We sat for a while in the darkening room. It was a Friday, one of those that you long for and then don’t know how to act when it arrived. Through the closed window I could hear the laughter of post-work crowds walking to the pub down the street and the occasional rumbling of the roll-up shop door.
The wine was disappearing fast. We had a few bottles waiting in the pantry, a promotional deal for wine delivery left in our mailbox, and another soon replaced the empty. We had started an argument.
“I know… but you didn’t have to take three gigs at a time. We don’t go out anymore so we spend less,” I said. A sip. Some time ago we had merged our upper bodies, my left shoulder and the right side of his back. I had taken to walking and sitting a bit behind him, otherwise our torsos would clash. I stopped dancing. I stopped seeing my girlfriends. I stopped lotioning myself after shower.
“Well, it’s work. Extra money is always a good idea.” Sip.
“We could have planned to do something together. It’s either work for you or other stuff.”
“I’m working to make it better for us. And we are together. All the time.”
A cold panic washed down my back. He was pulling away. I was ruining it, but my mouth didn’t belong to me anymore, something else was taking over.
“You’re just working or doing your Italian homework. Or texting your friends back.”
Silence. Gulp of wine.
“You can still do all your things while I can only put my dancing shoes on and stare at them. I haven’t seen real grass in months.”
“I want to spend as much time as possible with you.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. I can’t do anything I love anymore, and you’re always busy.”
Isaac‘s glass was empty. Then it was full again. “I know we were trying to separate without the surgery but we can still schedule it. We’ll need some recovery but you’d be able to dance soon.” He looked down at his lap.
“I don’t want a surgery.” My voice trembled. I tried to pull away but the stinging pain in my thigh stopped me. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore and, yet, it was the only thing I wanted, that warm, intoxicating swamp of emotional closeness.
I wasn’t sure when it started. But at that moment, sinking into the sofa with a glass in my white-knuckled fist, I didn’t know anymore where my thoughts began and where they ended. I didn’t know where my body began or ended. I said, “I just don’t understand why the only thing we talk about is this bloody separation surgery. Why is everyone always trying to separate from me?” I said it a bit louder than I wanted. The familiar lump in my throat was growing again, abandonment, trapped in smothering closeness. The usual. And the room had started to dance.
“That’s not true. I’m always here for you.” He squinted and rubbed his temple with his free hand.
“It’s not for me, it’s for us! Are you getting tired of this conversation or something?” My cheeks warmed and my breathing quickened. I studied him for clues, signs that he couldn’t wait to be rid of me and my sticky questions.
“No. I’m just trying to figure this out. And this is not helpful.” He had his head propped on his hand, leaning away from me. His ears were red from the wine, his fingers played with the empty glass.
My heart pounded. My cheeks flared and burned. My skirt cut me in half. The room started to pixelate, it rocked and swayed. The black windows seemed much further away than an hour ago. The air was hot, stiff and thick. Our merges were burning and making it hard to sit still.
A muffled dong from his phone. It slid out of his pocket and into his hand. He unlocked the screen and began reading a text.
Slowly, I reached out my hand with the glass and put it on the coffee table. I clutched my arms as tight as I could to my chest and pushed hard against the floor with my feet, yanked myself to the right and away.
There was a burning pain and an odd sound like paper tearing. Isaac was somewhere very far, his voice muffled, whimpering in shock. As the edges of the room darkened, I saw the scattering of scarlet red all around, patterning my skirt and sofa and coffee table.
I landed on my elbow on the soft covers of the sofa. Isaac’s face was far away. Our upper bodies had separated, but we were still connected from the hips down.
“What the hell are you doing?” Isaac’s chest rose and fell rapidly as his eyes widened. A dark stain was growing on the back of the sofa just above his shoulder. It was a horrible sight.
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stand feeling like a piece of meat or a useless body part!” My left arm was throbbing, a thick wet crawling over it and tickling my skin.
“This is not the way. This is crazy!”
I dragged my left arm, shiny with fresh blood, over to my chest again, and pulled my entire body away from him. Another tear and gasp of shock from Isaac, another dart of pain.
I lay face down, trying to collect myself, tears rolling down my cheeks and soaking the sofa. Only our legs were connected, now, from the knee to ankle.
“I just can’t do this anymore, I can’t… anymore.. this,” I choked on my words. Then I lifted myself and heard myself wheeze. I wiped my face, smudging my cheeks and eyes with blood.
Last lunge. I grabbed my thigh with both hands, fingers slipping, ignoring Isaac’s exhausted and sunken face, and pulled my leg as hard as I could.
Pulsating pain, that wave of deep sadness whispering, You are now on your own.
February 27
I lay staring at the spatter of dark red, scared, a great part of me missing. Finally separated. I don’t want to see it, the separation. I don’t want to look down and see what it looks like. And yet, I have awakened from a long sleep.
My fingers are cold and trembling with pain. I find Isaac’s hand, warm and rough, and covered in dry blood. He squeezes back, a weak effort, but an effort, nonetheless. And he is here, by my side. And I am free.
