Sappho in a college dorm
september 2020
Had Sappho lived in our day and age, the sight of my roommate would have made her write until there were no more lovely words left on this earth to spill.
Or, at least, that is what I like to imagine.
I’m not sure what an ancient Greek poet would think about a girl with eight fingers and a shaggy purple mullet.
Sometimes I think about how I would describe her, had I been a poet graced with the task.
To call her beautiful would almost be an insult, and she would laugh at the fool who dare try. There was so much more to her. I would compare her to something more earthy, more primal. She was like a rock, the kind you would find next to a hidden stream, a place for dragonflies to land and bask in the sun. A solid ground for floating souls like me. At the same time she was like the water, forever moving. And just like water, she was impossible to hold in your hand.
I saw her come and go, somewhere else every day. Art clubs, gigs, protest meetings, parties, impulsive travels, you name it and she went there. Whenever she came home, I’d be the first to hear her stories. We would share a cup of tea, a moment of tranquility in her turbulent life. She would tell me about her adventures, the places she’d seen, the people she met, the girls she kissed. Just like this little room couldn’t contain her, no person could tie her down.
Sometimes I wonder if I should feel jealous or left out, but I never do. I guess I just understand her too well.
And besides, the strange intimacies we share are enough for me.
Other people might see her edgy leather boots, but I see the Christmas socks she wears at home. Other people might see her obnoxiously colored hair, but I’m the one to help her smear in the dye in our cramped little bathroom.
Other people might see the smug look on her face when she flips them off with her three-fingered left hand, but I know the story of how she really lost those fingers – It was a dog incident when she was a kid, even though I know she prefers the stories about crocodile encounters or knife-fights with neo-Nazis.
To be known is to be loved. And by god, I have memorized everything about her that there is to know.
Her favorite tea, the way she folds her towels, the brand of fineliners she writes with, the sound of her footsteps in the hallway when she comes home at 3am.
I know what those sound like, because I wait for her to come home safe every night. It’s just a little habit that I picked up on.
When we moved in here, she insisted I took the top bunk bed, so she wouldn’t wake me up when she gets back.
I don’t think she’s noticed I’m never asleep anyway.
We have our own routines like this, she and her adventures, me and my quiet, waiting evenings.
And like always, I’m still awake when I hear her footsteps approach this night.
I switch off my lamp and roll on my side, pretending to sleep. Her keys are clattering against the door as she fumbles to open it, apparently struggling quite a bit.
She’s probably a bit drunk.
I hear her sigh as she steps in, and somehow, the sound alone is enough to make me realize something is off.
I lie still in the dark, listening to her familiar sounds. The soft clunk of her boots getting kicked in the corner, footsteps, shallow breathing. A glow through my eyelids tells me she’s switched on the light in the kitchen. The next ten minutes I hear water running, and I wonder what she’s doing in there.
Eventually, the sound stops, and I hear her footsteps again. In the middle of the room she stands still, hesitates.
The scraping of a chair.
A sigh.
Then, quiet.
She doesn’t move anymore. She doesn’t make a sound. She just sits there.
Worry churns in my stomach. Something is wrong.
I hesitate for a moment, before I sit up.
‘’Are you ok?’’, I ask, and turn on the light, just in time to see badly concealed shock on her face.
‘’Y…Yeah, I’m fine’’, she stammers, and gets up, but immediately sits down again. ‘’Sorry for waking you up.’’
‘’Don’t worry, I was still awake’’, I say, but my voice trails off as I get a good look at her face.
Her left eye is puffy and swollen, and there’s a blood stain on the collar of her shirt.
‘’What happened?’’
‘’This?’’, she gestures to her eye and pulls her face into a smirk.
‘’Remember Logan from biology? The fucker saw me kiss Caroline and cornered me behind the bar.’’
She’s still smiling as she says that, but it doesn’t feel like she thinks it’s funny at all.
‘’He did what?’’
Before I know it, I’m out of bed and next to her, as if I’m moving through a haze.
‘’Are you hurt? Where’d that blood come from?’’
‘’Just a nosebleed’’, she says, tears in her eyes as she smiles again, wrong in every way.
‘’It’s nothing, really, I just…’’
Her voice cracks as she covers her face with her hands and sobs.
‘’I just need a moment before I go to bed’’
‘’Come here’’, I whisper as I open my arms, and my voice feels toneless in my throat. She accepts my embrace and hides her face in my hair.
‘’I was really afraid’’, she murmurs, and I just nod while stroking her head. Her limbs are heavy on my shoulders, but it’s a good weight, solid, tangible.
It assures me that she’s here, that she’s safe.
And in this moment, at 2 am in our dimly lit dorm room, I want nothing more than to make her feel that too. I want to cover her body with mine, to trace my fingers over her bruises and will them away, to hold her forever and shield her from harm, I want her to never be hurt again.
‘’We need to report him’’, I manage to say. ‘’At uni, and to the police, we need to…’’
‘’I don’t want to think about that right now’’, she says. ‘’Tomorrow. Maybe. But not now.’’
And I understand that.
So I just hold her, and we sit together while waiting for the night to pass. Tomorrow, we will get up, we will go on.
But right now, we are simply two girls in each other’s arms, without the desire to be anything more.