Illustrations by Thunder Miller @sophia_thunder_

Peanut Butter Cup

The mini chocolate peanut butter cups are starting to feel like pebbles in a backpack, keeping me river-sunken. Everyone I love is well. I don’t hear from the ones who don’t love me back but they seem very well in their different cities. Me, I am in the river doing fine.

My thyroid is unhappy with me. Peanut butter is on the list of snacks that make me weak and wary, that melt my will and muscles. But it goes so well with chocolate, I tell my thyroid. Look, what a beautiful couple. I flip the fatal coins between my teeth. Soon my marrow will ache from being scolded. I lay there, water rushing, but my heart beats still.

Maybe the stream will smooth my organs like rocks, I think, round and kind. Make me a disc of minerals and pores. An egg of sediment, impossible to hatch, lying with its smoothened kin. Ripple away this headache, this slow-thump blood pump and all its vessels.

I tried, upright and dry, so many ways of getting love back—my backpack full of tools. I sent Morse code with the twinkle of my eye. I used laughter. I used theatre. Playlists and peanut butter. I bought out all the seats. Took up soccer and photography. Poured seed in the bird feeders, lingered in the parking lot. Before you turn on your headlights, stand here with me, on the gravel, and love me too.

My thyroid howled in its chamber. I would pull into the driveway to a wailing heart, asking where the hell I’d been. I missed every curfew. My pockets were long empty but still I left trails, lint and popcorn kernels, hoping my loves would follow me home.

Instead, my loves moved cities. I’d appreciate it, they said, if we stayed friends. Yes, of course, I said. But hey—do you want the rest of these? A million peanut butter cups in my backpack like nuggets of gold. Oh, keep them, they said. I don’t think I like peanut butter and chocolate half as much as you do.

I plan to stay in this riverbank a long time: spend my days conversing with deposits. I’ll emerge after eons, refined, my thyroid worn to dearness. I’ll have no edges, only weight. An old friend will walk past with their sweetheart and pick me up, time’s latest pebble, to admire how I skip down the bend when thrown. We should head out soon, buttercup, they’ll say, and then keep walking.

- Erin Malimban @erinmalimban