my engine light is on…

listen as you read <3

nights - frank ocean.mp3

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my boyfriend asked me what I thought about prenups while steam blurred the bathroom mirror and water ran down our backs. we were skin to skin, the kind of closeness that usually softens questions, but this one felt like a sashimi knife. “what do you think about prenups?” he said, like we were in some luxury warm jacuzzi instead of a rental apartment with a broken towel rack hanging like a loose tooth from the wall, a wall we broke weeks ago and never fixed.

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i scoffed. i did. i couldn’t help it. we’d just gotten off work. it was a thursday. around six thirty, maybe seven. my head still ached from my day at the clinic, and all i could think about was how we were barely scraping for rent. his dad had sent him money for his half, i knew this because he had just told me before getting in the shower. and here he was, talking prenups. like we were two tycoons dividing islands, not two kids figuring out if the car could last another week without the engine light screaming louder than the radio.

i really didn’t even know what to say at first. my laugh came out sharp, like cracked glass. he looked at me like i’d failed some test i didn’t know i was taking. and i’m scared to know the score.

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later, in the car on the way to my mom’s for dinner, the fight started. his hair was still damp, dripping like raindrops on his clothes. the flat tire light blinked, and the engine light glowed like an omen. i asked him if he realized how insane it sounded. we are late on bills, lucky to have someone with fresh food to cook for us for free, and he’s worried about me stealing his imaginary fortune?

he said it wasn’t like that. “it’s protection. for both of us.”

i told him it felt like an attack on my character. because it did. because if you love me now, if you trust me now, what changes when there’s more to lose? he couldn’t understand why I’d take it personally, and maybe i couldn’t explain it without sounding like a woman who’s read too many books about love as a gamble. or seen my mom have to take care of our whole family ( more on that later…)

i said it plain: “i’m a woman first, and i have more to fall back on by myself than you do.” he didn’t like that. maybe because it was true. maybe because it wasn’t.

i told him i trusted him enough, now and in the future, that i’d never do that to him. he didn’t give me the same back. just said, “people change. emotions change. intentions change.”

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and that’s the part that stuck. not the question. not the prenup. the fact that when i handed him my faith like an open palm, he left it hanging.

so i told him fine. i’d sign it if it makes him comfortable. he didn’t argue. he didn’t even flinch. i thought that would make him happy. contrarily, he just sat there, staring out the window like the trees had something to say that i didn’t.

weeks ago, the towel rack fell off the wall in our bathroom. screws scattered on the floor like teeth, and we left it there. walking around it. pretending it wasn’t a warning.

what does forever cost when you’re still paying last month’s bills?