BY ADDIE TSAI (“HIEROPHANY” BY SHANNON ELIZABETH HARDWICK)
As a child of divorced parents, I did not believe in marriage. My twin and I would lie on our identical bellies on our identical beds, and we would daydream about the weddings that we would have. We would marry twins in a double ceremony. We would not wear the same dress, that much we knew. We would marry men, because that is all we knew we were entitled to.
And then, for many years, I did not believe in marriage. I still believed in weddings, but I no longer wanted anything of mine doubled. Being a twin was enough. I went to therapy, where I learned that, if you make of marriage what you want, if you refuse the patriarchy and all the systems placed upon the institution of marriage, it could give you what you need and desire.
I married him because I believed he would thread a permanence, at long last, into my life. I strongly believed that he would always be there. Which is not to say that I believed we would always be married. I thought we would always be intertwined, as two individuals who sought for and believe in one another’s happiness and wellbeing.
It was December in New Mexico. The snow fell onto the ground outside, as well as the back of our favorite roaming doe, which we named Juniper, after the name of our cabin, and also the name of a dream I was forced to terminate. But he didn’t know that.
As I sniffled my way through an incidental cold, I sang and danced to Timberlake—Since you came around, I’ve been living a different life—a sentiment that rocked me to my core so intently, that I began to cry. He remained confused, still unclear what it was I was performing for.
I knelt next to him where he lay on our small bed, the fire crackling nearby in the fireplace. I brought out a ring box in the shape of a Christmas stocking, and asked, if he wanted, to make this next song true. I played Band of Horses’ “Marry Song.” I didn’t need him to say yes. I only needed to offer him my love, friendship, and commitment, for as long as I could possibly imagine.
Tears came to his eyes—a strange and unfamiliar image to my own—as he opened the box, revealing a simple setting in the shape of a flower like a small child might draw on a piece of paper, filled in with sapphires of every color, in the order of the color wheel.
It is easier to believe that the tears were a performance, that the soft underbelly of vulnerability he showed me that day was a lie.
It is easier to believe that he tried to will himself to be the person who could accept this call, to believe he was capable of love.
Both of these statements are true. And also neither.
Addie Tsai (any/all) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color, who teaches and lives in Houston, Texas. She also teaches in Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program and Regis University's Mile-High MFA program. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. Addie is the author of the young adult novel Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures, their queer biracial genderswapped retelling of Frankenstein, is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press Fall 2022. Their writing has been published in Foglifter, VIDA Lit, Banango Street, beestung, The Offing, The Collagist, The Feminist Wire, Nat. Brut., and elsewhere. She is Fiction co-Editor and editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, contributing staff writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.
(artist) Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Gulf Coast, Salamander Magazine, Salt Hill, Plume, The Texas Observer, PANK, Four Way Review, Harpur Palate, Passages North, among others. Hardwick serves as the poetry editor for The Boiler Journal.