Sometimes Love Comes with a Cost by Rachel Tanner

Okay, so I guess I'm in love

with a man who's into wrestling.

That's fine. I've been building

myself up to this for years:

loving people who are into

things I will never understand.

Loving people who are into

bands that sound like banging trashcans

and weed that smells like dead bodies.

I remember that night in your car

on the way home from the Thai

restaurant in Gadsden, I asked

you about wrestling and listened

intently as you told me

things I never thought I'd want to know.

But I want to know these things

because they're important to you.

I want to hear the entrance music

of your favorite fighters and

hear the tragic backstories

of the ones who didn't

make it out alive.

I would listen to you talk

all day, if you'd let me.

I'd dive even deeper into all your

interests, if I could.

---

Rachel Tanner is a queer, disabled writer from Alabama whose work has recently appeared in Tenderness Lit, Wine Cellar Press, and elsewhere. She has a monthly videogame writing column in Videodame and she tweets @rickit.