Lina Abascal

“What a perfect time to practice your Spanish,” you joked quietly in the pharmacy. I told you I didn’t know how to ask for what we needed. You asked me to try. All I remembered was that the Spanish word for pregnant sounds a lot like the English word for embarrassed and I was hoping in just a few minutes to know I would only be one of those two.

Your rent is cheaper in New York. Your shower is smaller in Los Angeles. If you close your eyes and your banking app, you can’t tell which one you’re in anymore.

Your parents like her. She is quiet, unsuspecting, pretty, and doesn’t talk about money, jobs, or her strange family. You two don’t text excessively and it doesn’t bother her. You hang out most weeknights and some weekends. I try to rid myself of the parts of me that I have assigned the blame of losing you.

Please leave the selflessness. Leave the maturity, the maternity. How I let you be the one with the problems. Leave the organization, the effort. Give back what motivated me to dress up for you. Make sure to leave all the parts of you that I made. I can’t be here without them.

I would rather hate you than not think about you at all.

I told myself I’d write about the time we parked your station wagon at the top of the Hollywood Hills by the bird streets and sat and talked during Thanksgiving break. I don’t even remember if we kissed.