Placeholders
by Lauren Barbato
(notes to self, 2011-2013)
Wear your best Forever 21 dress, the one the feminist housewife from Beverly Hills called posh, to the office every Thursday; wear your thrift-store A-line find with the gold belt on Fridays; leave work early and drive down the 405 to view that apartment in Long Beach, the one with all the built-ins and the illegal rooftop deck; when he visits the office unannounced, do not tell him he can’t talk to you like a child, it’ll upset the interns; drink yourself sick on tequila at the tourist joint overlooking the harbor; weren’t you here only two years ago, chain-smoking with the junkies?; when you drive east on 7th, don’t you dare turn your head when you pass Olive Ave.; this is how you cut your bangs straight, just grazing your eyebrows, but not too chunky; this is how you cut a sock to use for a bun, and how to smile when he says you look ridiculous; you don’t do anything and you never will; this is how you pack for Jersey; this is how you pack up your cat; this is how you decide what to toss into the trash outside airport security—that Forever 21 dress, that gold belt; this is what you do when he follows you across the country; this is how you leave on a night flight to Newark; but you didn’t really say no, did you?; this is how you pack for Boston; walk alone along the Charles like a lost character in a Faulkner novel.
(notes to self, 2014-2017)
Wear your nicest leather boots, the ones you got from the clearance rack at the Macy’s in Downtown Crossing, on Wednesday; meet the real estate broker outside her office in Brookline 15 minutes early; tell her why you’re looking for a studio in November but don’t tell her you cheated, don’t tell her you cheated; you are a young professional and you are respectable; write down everything the real estate broker says: keep three months’ rent in the bank, ideally six months; offer him a place to stay; when he appears at your apartment door with three IKEA bags of clothes and books, a single mitten, and a blue electric typewriter, don’t be shocked—didn’t you already say he could stay?; pull him inside and ask, what the fuck is wrong with you?; get used to spending parties in the bathroom, either yelling or holding his head while he pukes—he always gets home okay; this is how you pack for your friend’s couch; this is what you take into a house with seven people, three cats and a dog; this is how you create a pillow bed on a bare floor; this is how you make a home in your backseat; how long does temporary last?; this is how you ration your money so you can go back to school, and this is how you say I am leaving for good; this is how to convince yourself you’re in love again, packing again for L.A., but things are different now; this is how you pack for San Francisco; this is how you get an Amtrak from Carmel to Los Angeles, then the $10 bus to LAX, or from Carmel to San Francisco, then the BART to SFO, but you never did this, no—you decided to stay the morning after he grabbed you in bed; this is how you return to a home that’s no longer yours; don’t you dare go back to Olive Ave., where you chose to live a life alone; tell the man you met in Palm Desert no thanks when he sends you a dick pic; tell the ex you met in film school you had no idea he’s getting married when he texts you before his wedding; tell the married man you don’t want to be a stopover after he tells you in that Nashville hotel room there’s a 95 percent chance we’re getting a divorce; this is how you drink yourself sick on bourbon before that night flight from Nashville to Newark; this is how you rearrange your apartment at 3 a.m.; this is how you convince yourself you did not waste the life you chose to live alone; this is how you tell the married man, it’s okay, co będzie to będzie; this is how you reach for the bottle; this is how you become okay with temporary.
(notes to self, 2017-2019)
Remind yourself that he is married but separated; shrug when women tell you—still married, honey; you are a young professional and you are respectable; this is how you pack for Denver; this is how you spend the night in a terminal, hugging your carry-on across two stiff chairs; this is how you pick out furniture for an apartment that will never be yours; this is how you don’t respond when he says you make him feel uneasy; this is how you don’t respond when he says the things he did aren’t that bad—he’ll probably say all of this isn’t that bad, wouldn’t he?; this is how you don’t respond if he says you are excruciating, or was it exhausting?; this is how you unpack your bags; this is how you don’t get on that plane to Denver; listen to the women who tell you to be careful; listen to your student when he says it be like that sometimes; don’t listen when the married man says he hates you—he’s not the first—but don’t let him list it as a reason to leave you; this is how you reach for the bottle; when your 98-year-old papa asks, What’s the weather there, in Denver?, say it’s cold but not as cold as here; this is how you learn to stay in a city that has claimed you, and try not to feel so bad—there will be other cities; this is how you reach for another bottle; this is how you practice saying, I hope you’re doing well, I hope you’re doing well; and this is how you say, I hope you’re doing well, I hope you’re doing well; this is how you reach and reach until the bottle is the only thing by your side; one day you won’t be so young; one day you’ll be the same age as his ex-wives; do you have enough now?; at a certain point, you’ll stop counting the days, but you’ll still remember; don’t you dare look down the block when you pass Olive Ave.; this is how you turn your head away from someone else’s husband; this is how you turn your head away from someone else’s marriage; this is how you turn your head away from someone else’s divorce; they didn’t tell you it was easy, but really, who the fuck do you think you are?; this is how you make a life for yourself and no one else; this is how you make a life for yourself with room for someone else; this is how you stop chalking everything up to bad timing; this is what you say when you call him, and if he doesn’t pick up, you say co będzie to będzie but you sure don’t pick up the bottle; I hope you’re doing well; tell your papa that you’re going for a Ph.D. and when your papa asks, they gonna pay you good?, don’t tell him how it really works; we don’t need to know how it really works; this is how you go home after work; this is how you go to bed early; this is how you look at yourself in the mirror on the days you wake up crying, and this is how you look at yourself the day you stopped; I hope you’re doing well, doing well; and if he comes back around to tell you, I’ve learned things from you, don’t tell him to unlearn it, because he’ll think you have no grace, but say, thank you, I’ve learned what I could.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Lauren Barbato's stories and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Common, North American Review, The Hopkins Review, Blackbird, Cola, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ms. magazine, and Nursing Clio, among others. She received the 2025 Short Fiction Award from American Literary Review and has been in residence at Jentel, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A Ph.D. candidate at Temple University, Lauren holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark and lives in New Jersey with her two black cats.
Website: www.laurenbarbato.com
Instagram: @laurenbarbato
Bluesky: @laurenbarbato.bsky.social