01. Dear Nina,

I began seeing dragonflies two years ago. Abe and I were on a “research” trip to the Malabar Coast. We got in a spat on account of a phone call from a certain brilliant gamine photographer at SPINDL magazine, interested in profiling me, and not knowing him from Adam. I fled to the backwater and prayed at its feet. When I looked up from the bank I saw a dragonfly so brightly red that at first I thought it was a lightning bug. It hovered above the lake and skimmed it just enough to break the surface tension, directing my eye towards the rattlesnake just below the water’s horizon. I felt already that I was privy to some exhibition of godship, and pressed the surrounding force for more. “Show it to me.” The composition unraveled before my eyes into one contiguous, gelatinous ribbon. A tiger pounced onto the scene and thrashed at the rattlesnake, chopping it well into pieces, then sinking back into flat matter. The dragonfly continued darting on its path above the floating discs of scaly flesh. When the snake finished leaking indigo tar from its pieces, the dragonfly descended between each segment with a lucent silver thread until it was whole again, and moved on to follow a python’s trail along the bank. Any gash in the filament was sewn and sealed with ease and surgical precision. They call dragonflies “snake doctors” in some backwater pockets of the Southern U.S., and I have come to understand why. I stayed and watched the vast self-healing organism until the sun and my pride set out of view. Isaac was conceived that night.

02. Dear Nina,

January: ripe tomato on the vine. It’s the beginning again and you don’t know me at all and everything stirs to a buzzing resonance. A bird is fooled by the harmony. It flies in through the window and drops a beakful of twigs onto the carpet. The house is so cold, you can see the bird’s breath, its song visibly suspended in a silver cluster of mist. I remain sat. I have a knack for anticipating beauty; if you keep the blinds drawn, you can see wings and twigs coming at you from a mile away. Amorphous, amorous visions flood my mind while the real mess of us remains wound tight. You tell me about the versions of you that live in your head. I'm more intimately acquainted with them than the version of you that’s in my own head. By the end of the week, I’ve come to know them all. By the end of the winter, they’ve come to know me. And by the end of the spring, we and our fellow selves have been bathed in such bright light that we have spun into our own oblivion. 

Then it’s summer. All June the sky has been lavender earl grey, and today with extra heavy cream, and a mist hanging in the air with such swollen weight, you could press a thumbprint into it. We can still be new. I’m coming down from the market with new clementines, you’re stumbling barefoot from the shore up the cobblestone hill muddying the hem of my new red skirt. “The lady at the market sold it to me for a bag of dates! We should start trading stocks!” A giddy shriek escapes me and I shake my head in one small, swift motion which should have been imperceptible but I'm sure you noticed it.

The skirt hangs low at your hips and catches under the soles of your feet every few steps, but you were so excited about buying me my first maternity something, you wanted it to be the first thing I saw.

Slow down.

Look down.

Watch your feet.

But you’re watching me, with a curiosity I recognize well. It’s the only thing that stills you.

The first time I saw it was during your second week here, the night we got soaked in red wine and went skinny dipping. When the violent, splashing excitement settled, I caught you watching our reflections in the silvery pond and thought to myself, this may be the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. I snuck out of bed that night to paint you, dipped faithfully in the grayscale of the waxing moon, for the very first time. Today we’re the only blots of color in the whole scene, clementines and cotton leaping and bounding to meet. Against the pale wet air it must look to you like I'm holding fire in my hand. To me, against the sand and sea, you look blood-drenched.

03. Dear Nina,

Abe doesn’t believe in love. Not like we do. When he talks about it, he talks about it clinically, like it’s a biological camouflage for something else: the fulfillment of some more primal urge.

But there’s this moth with camouflage wings out there. I can see you looking out the window now. Don’t bother– it’s out in the proverbial there. (You never do get to hear the specs on “out there.” In this case it refers to India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.) It looks like two flies eating shit. When I told you about it, you said “oh,” as if you’d merely forgotten.

The Zulu hud bug wears Picasso-stained armor. Picasso said women are machines of suffering. So, I’m not sure about the evolutionary impulse but if this species persists, we might have finally found empirical proof that modern art has value. But anyways that’s not exactly camouflage.

There’s a blushing snail out there. That’s just cute.

There’s a ladybug that looks like a peach. It has fuzz and everything. You like peaches, much more than you like dates. You have dreams about peaches. The kinds of dreams I don’t belong in, that don’t belong to me. I wonder how the part of me that lives inside your mind occupies herself while you plant peach trees all night long.

But back to ladybugs– that’s not camouflage either.

I don’t think they know about peaches.

Are you getting it?

It is in the nature of some things to be both beautiful and honest.

04. Dear Abraham,

I'm hoping if I stop calling you Abe you’ll stop calling me becky. My son will be called however he wants. I'm naming him Isaac.

I've been having these crazy dreams. I used to tell you my dreams at the table every morning. you’d play with the razor edge of your grapefruit spoon and i was never sure if you were listening. But then i’d get to read up on my own psyche in your next piece of autofiction. Don’t know when I gave you creative license over my REM cycles but I don't mind. I'm not a writer anyways. It would have been romantic if you’d just admitted I was your muse.

Today I ate my grapefruit with my hands, and I didn't cry. Your muse has since abandoned you. I bet you’re having writer’s block. I remember when you’d throw down your pencil and mutter to me about going for a drive. I was never invited but when you’d come back we’d just try to have sex and go to bed anyway. One time you let me come, only so we could find a late-night bakery to fulfill a particularly strong pregnancy craving (birthday cake with candles). You didn’t trust yourself to pick the right frosting. We passed a cardboard box on the side of the road. I begged you to turn around and you wouldn’t and I said “what if there’s a baby in the box?” and you laughed, deep and low, for a whole minute, and stroked my hair with an absent mind which you hadn’t had in months, not since she came, but kept driving. Last time you went for a drive you never came back. I guess I’m not allowed to blame you. But I can mail you my dream journal if you’re still stuck.

When I'm awake I imagine you splashing into puddles to avoid me. Or swerving on a mountain drive, all the way off the cliff into a ditch. Now I know when you say “that’s one way to look at it” it means you disagree. And “i don’t mind” means bye.

June 4 5:27 a.m. : dream : breakfast with abe and nina. there are ants on the table. there are only two ants on the table. 2 is scarier than 3. 2 implies a lot. what if one of the ants is pregnant? what if there was a baby in that box after all? would anyone else ever be as endeared by that as you?

i think about how nina didn’t find as much amusement in me as you. maybe it’s because she sees me for who i am. i don’t know which of you does. i don’t know if either of you do. but being a photographer’s muse is a much cushier gig. all i have to do is exist. 

isaac replaces you at the table, but he’s well into his teens and wears his eyepatch on the left. we’ve successfully produced an heir to the camera’s eye. i expect him to replace me by his first birthday. nina squashes the ants and i jump awake.

05. Dear Nina,

Certain things follow me. Ants, earth signs, phantom train chugs, old pennies, red dragonflies. I haven’t told you what I really think about some of these signs. You don’t believe in curses.

Reunited among cacti and pebbles, I tread water, waiting for you to join me. I stare blankly ahead at the flax lily bush, pretending I’m not waiting for you to join me. It takes a harsh, cartoonish shape, the center leaf standing at least four feet tall, thin as an eviction notice and shaking as violently. My eyes cross and when my vision refocuses, a red dragonfly has appeared, sitting calmly atop the tall leaf as it sways.  It’s hard to tell if the bug is sticking with the leaf through the wind’s torment, or if the leaf is trying to shake the bug off. The air is still. I chalk it up to a matter of perspective. Its landing pad is pointy and perfectly upright from the root; how small are a red dragonfly’s legs, anyways? The dragonfly and I watch each other for another ten minutes or so, both clinging to our lives as they slip out from under us, until you make the dive, cutting through the water and into my arms. The dragonfly finally loses balance and makes a red splat on the pavement. Your back is to the whole scene. Moments later, I point out a lizard crossing in front of us. It takes you a second to spot it but when you do, you’re overjoyed. I choke back an old story. “I keep seeing red dragonflies, too,” I tell you instead. You roll your eyes, “I’ve seen like eight of those,” and float away on your back.

It’s August, I’ve been cursed, and when I tell you my theories you believe me, and I don’t know if it’s because you never used to, or if these months of drought have fused my body to oblivion, but blue flames of gratitude coil around my thighs and flicker up my back, and it’s all I can feel. In the attic at white noon I lay my head on your chest. In the backyard at dusk I lay my head aflame on your cool, chlorine-dampened stomach. We stare at the sky as the stars blink into place. I can read your thoughts. They come to me as pictures.

Flash. Foxglove: you missed me.

Flash. You promise to hold my hand tonight as the frosted grass beneath our feet melts into morning dew.

Flash. Fig tree: self-explanatory.

Flash. Foxglove stem: you miss me in advance.

Flash. You’re seeing everything in shades of teenage violet and you are so high that you’re afraid your mom can tell, all the way from Madrid.

How blue and grateful I am to lie all day with someone who believes in curses and lizards.