• I remember the first time we met.

    It was fall, under the oak tree, where the leaves still waved at your presence. Your hair an auburn yellow in the high noon sun, tangled in tufts around your nape. I remember feeling the hot rays of life in your voice; my skin prickled and danced in your touch. You told me stories of your childhood and showed me the scars on your arm––thin and light; soft and felt. You pushed me in the leaves, tasting the smell of sap in the air. I couldn’t remember my name.

    It was the hot summer tide that rolled in our hearts. I remember wrestling in the yard––I was no match, you knew that. Your arms too big, your chest too warm . . . and inviting. It was easy, you see, to feel the scent of your shirt––to know your face by heart. You smiled in victory while mine did the same. I remember when you pinned me down in favor while I claimed you with a caress. My hands tangled; your hair tied.

    I remember the stares. The small voices whispered in the corners of the school. We were a commodity. A pair. A couple. But I never noticed. I didn’t care. You tugged at my arm, jutting me sharply in the conclaves of the social dogmas. My speech was slurred when you smoothed my hair, twisting it like furls of twine around your fingers. You absently pulled at the threads of my jacket when the rain outside kept us wrapped in smothered blankets. You were my other half. My better half.

    #


    “But you forgot about that didn’t you?”

    My chest laid open––bare. You looked at me under the falling showers of the sky––no umbrella, no hat. You never liked those things. You hated being covered. But I knew that. I always knew.

    I dressed in your shirt––you didn’t comment. Your head was held low and still, averting my gaze with your vacant eyes––eyes that held the world moments before had suffered and wilted under the weight of its fat. I couldn’t remember what we captured years against the present tide: perhaps we were like fireflies confined to a jar, alighting momentarily to shine our faces; dying without air to sustain our life. Was it for show? Really? I wanted to ask but was too afraid of rationale––something cogent and real . . . like the love that we shared. A pair, they called us. A pair we never said . . .

    “We’ve grown apart.”

    That was all that you said. Your hair a tangled mess and mine a weave of curtains. My hands felt cold––empty. My mind pushed against it––the wave of emotions that rejected your response––then accepted. Accepted. Blasphemous, I thought. Our time shifted into ebony veils of a nepenthe: the future we never did; family we never shared.

    Without a word, you left––and that was that. Our life, our memories, our smells wrecked together into trite condolences. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t react. I wanted to run screaming into you––holding your chest so that you pinned me to the ground. Your happiness mixed with my gluttony. But it wouldn’t work. We both knew that.

    And so I stood––washing away the scrapes of our memories into the washboards of the cement. They trickled down and fell from my eyes, my heart drained and soiled . . . but this time you didn’t care. You didn’t care.

    Departing. That’s what you meant. What you wanted. Your back was to me as I saw you walk to the edge of the sidewalk and disappear. I should have countered: turned around and lost our tracks, but I wasn’t like you. I was never like you. I paced myself back, slipping on the wet pavement slightly, but never turning my back––not on us. Not on our memories. I walked backwards in the April showers; under the dark grey clouds; under the skylight of the city, the lights that hovered over my shoulder––they didn’t bother me. Not like they use to.

    And that was you. Your memory. The memory of our time together. You must have forgotten, but I hadn’t . . . and I never would.

    Because rain in April never did make sense . . . but it always walked back with us to growth.