maria clement† and i discuss being the “homewrecker” M. Amory it is clear in revisiting what happened that, of course, it was my own fault for admitting i wanted to see inside a man’s heart and not have that held against me. how much i loved him. how, once, i wished myself death rather than ever cause him unhappiness. and now i suppose he cannot decide if i was helpless or temptress, just whatever word means he is not at fault for his own choices. i will be held in history’s judgmental eyes one day for wanting kindness so badly i would betray another woman for it, so i would just like to be left alone in the meantime. the light turns on, and he decides to null and void everything that happened between us and now, i suppose, i am my own unreliable narrator on account of it. almost sure i entirely imagined the way he looked at me in a dark attic, like he could frame a magnum opus around the birthmark above my left eye. i once asked him to write about me so i cannot now begrudge him for giving me what i wanted. once, i swear to you, i heard the revolution rewound through his laugh and, once, i held his head in my hands and intimacy was his wet curls tangling my fingers and, once, i watched him sleep against my chest and knew there was no way this ended without me being burned for it but god how i still stupid hoped for a better outcome. in another lifetime i’m sure we will never meet at all and i think that might be for the best, to not have my heart constantly return to the nights we were the only two people awake in the entire world.

† Maria Clements, more commonly known as Maria Reynolds, was the “mistress” of Alexander Hamilton during his time as treasury secretary of the united states, who was publicly scapegoated in The Reynold’s Pamphlet to protect him from allegations of embezzling. still, when i sit candlelight-alone, there is a future i will never hold, dancing in front of me, where we met under kinder circumstances, and had a chance. where i got to love him the way i wanted to, where he was able to love me back.

M/Em Amory (they/them) is, like glitter, an intangible light effect made physical, mostly plastic, and often from New Jersey. They can be found on twitter @queerparalethal or instagram @paralethalleftist or, in real life, under a pile of blankets with their two cats, both scorpios. They are extraordinarily attached to pigeons as they feel they are all just reincarnated New Yorkers, which they heavily identify with.