This Summer I Dated a Girl

This summer I dated a girl who liked fungi. I dated a girl who was allergic to alliums. A girl who was allergic to chocolate. A girl who liked drinking chai. This summer I dated a girl who worked for the government. A girl who worked with electricity. A girl whose work required her to sign an NDA. I dated a girl who liked to go on food tours of major cities. A girl who liked to make art with moss. A girl who liked to drink wine, a girl who liked a skinny margarita, a girl who could only have Polish potato vodka. I had to go to a specialty store to make her a drink. I dated a girl who watched Marvel movies, a girl who preferred Star Trek, a girl who liked British murder mysteries curled up in bed. A girl who played basketball, a girl who played hockey, a girl with a bruised foot, a girl recovering from surgery. A girl who always needed to reschedule, a girl who needed regularly scheduled introvert time, a girl who drove to see me in a rainstorm. This summer I dated an atheist. I dated a girl who went to church every week. A girl whose church was the gym. I dated a girl who took her teen to protests and a girl who asked what the protests were about. All of these girls had once been married to men; that was the only thing they had in common, other than their interest in me. A girl who liked to make spreadsheets, a girl who asked me what I liked, a girl who didn’t. We went out for coffee, for dinner. We picked blueberries. We went to the bookstore. We painted pottery at a studio. We made crafts on her apartment floor. We texted in the morning and before bed, on the app and on my phone. Sent each other pictures and silly emojis. I liked one girl best: the one I wasn’t really dating. 

Robin Silbergleid is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently In the Cubiculum Nocturnum (Dancing Girl Press). With collaborators from The Art of Infertility, she is coeditor of Infertilities, A Curation (Wayne State UP, 2023). Her book Queer Mother Memoir: Experiments in Life/Narrative is forthcoming from Palgrave in 2026. Born and raised in the Midwest, she currently lives in East Lansing, Michigan, where she is professor of English at Michigan State University. 

This essay is a Short Reads original.