Thumbnail by Jess Allen
I didn’t own much the first time we met because I’d been living in Manhattan. My ex-boyfriend had just gone and took nothing with him but there wasn’t much of anything to take besides perhaps the trinkets of disappointment he doled out to me from time to time if he gave anything at all. So my room was significantly bigger, my heart hollow and wider by age. Once I got to Brooklyn, because it was deep Brooklyn, at least for that time, and to the people I knew, there was space to collect. My furniture and experience were small enough to crowd only a Manhattan bedroom. But I recall that he, upon entering the room, went immediately to what I did have, which was a collection of books on the windowsill with the spines facing out ensuring all the pages turned yellow in the sun. He bent his tall frame at the waist and read down each one, which did not really reflect my taste in the slightest, but were what I had. Then he met me at the bed, bent the same way, and looked closely at my face. And he nodded. And I nodded. And though it made no sense, he living in another state at the time, we decided that we should see each other.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Chloé in Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.