I should be happy. Or feeling bittersweet, at least. On the one hand, I’m thankful to have had the chance to share so many things with her:

• listening to Bring Me The Disco King (Lohner Remix), as she sat curled in my lap in the darkness of my room
• runs for bubble tea before settling in for the night with a movie or two
• a road trip to Toronto, where I got to introduce her to my friends, Pacific Mall, and dragon’s beard candy
• parties at Pat and Jen’s, with board games, Rock Band, delicious food, amazing people, and general silliness
• moments like this
• looking into her eyes while our bodies were locked in blankets on the living room floor
• reading my favourite parts of The Prophet to her
• just the two of us going to dim sum on a beautiful Saturday morning, and introducing her to a medley of new dishes

But there’s one thing I regret, and that’s not being able to spend the night with her, for she had never slept over, you see. Sure, there were times when we stayed awake well past sunrise, with only the touch of hand and flesh as silent dialogue, my desire to prolong the pleasure driving my will to stay awake to every moment possible with her. Those are some of my favourite memories. But the sleep that eventually took us was only our bodies passing out briefly from exhaustion, and when we woke, she’d be gone soon after.

There are other things I wish I had had the chance to do while it lasted — sharing a relaxing bath, photography and video ideas, getting involved in a deep co-op game — but none of them were as important as a night spent sleeping together.

A long time ago, I wrote about how a girlfriend helped me figure out the importance of the night because of my earlier romances, and the situations that never let me share something as simple as sleep, the most intimate of intimates.

In a relationship, sharing the night is more important than sharing fluids. Falling asleep with someone is an acceptance of trust, a way of saying that we’re comfortable enough to drift into our subconscious minds.

Perhaps it was my fault for keeping her awake. I wonder now, if on one night, I should have let myself sleep, instead of letting our passion take us long into the next day.

There were patches of skin on her body that would build, and turn white, and flake.

She was always self-conscious of those areas, to the point of tears, but I called them my kissing map, as each patch would lead my lips to the next. In the dark, the spots revealed themselves in their texture, like delicate wounds. How different they tasted, how strange that skin felt against my own.

I would always kiss those spots, in hopes that my lips would convince her that she had nothing to be self-conscious about around me. To ease, and share their burden.

To acknowledge that she was flawed, as we all are on earth, but I still loved and accepted her, despite it all.

In the dark, our bodies fit like puzzle pieces — face in neck, crest in valley, curve in curve. I’m completely vulnerable when she lets me love her like this. She brings my guard down.

It’s the way she makes me happy without trying. The way I’m filled with tenderness every time I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The way her existence gives me hope for the rest of the world.

If I chose to fall back on old habits and kept my distance to protect myself, I wouldn’t know this ineffable feeling. I may get hurt, but it’s worth every moment I can be next to her.

Maybe she’s right, and I’ll feel differently by the time it’s necessary. Until then, there’s no use in fighting it.

My heart never gave me a choice.

Romance. It dies as we get older.

I’m not talking about love. Love lasts forever if you’re doing it right. I’m talking about the time when love is still mysterious.

Think of high-school. Over the bra, under the blouse, hoping to god your parent’s don’t walk in. When you’re exploring someone’s body with wonder. When you’re not sure how to act, how to interpret things, and you’re tearing your heart out cause you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

You lose that as you live and you learn and you grow. Confidence takes that nervousness away because you speak your mind, you share yourself, and the uncertainty is gone.

Maybe I’m just feeling old. Maybe I’m just clinging to the past in a fit of nostalgia, to the innocence of my youth when love was the only thing to worry about. Romance without practicality, boundaries, type, or class.

Maybe my more recent relationships just haven’t had that nervousness. There was always that immediate connection that leaves little room for doubt. As fiery as they were, there was no mystery.

Maybe I’m just feeling numb again.

John still comes to me with girl advice every now and then, when he’s losing sleep and he’s writing terrible, hilarious poetry. He hates the uncertainty, but I tell him to think of when he’s older and married to the same person for forty years, how much he’ll miss those feelings.

I tell him to enjoy it. To lose himself. He should be so lucky to feel so strongly about someone.

We all should at least once in our lives, before it’s too late and the romance dies.

Her unwitting nickname in high school was Fudd (as in Elmer), because her “r”s came out as babyish “w”s.

This was partially due to the fact that she would imitate her older brother in admiration during childhood, after he developed his own impediment from an orofacial sports injury. The other, and much more severe, aspect of her impediment was a random and sudden inability to speak. No stutter, no slur.

As her speech therapist explained, it was a short-circuit in the brain, causing her to believe that a sentence was finished when she was only half-way through saying it. The only problem was that she would get stuck on a word. On good days she simply couldn’t repeat it, on bad days she couldn’t speak at all. Most people thought it was brought on by a rather traumatic series of events brought on by her supposed friends in high school. The wascals.

I always found it endearing, but she never cared for it. One of the tricks she used to get by was to take her time in saying a word. E-nun-ci-ate. It was like massaging the tension from a muscle, and slowly, she would be able to speak again. Another trick was to imagine being in a comfort zone, which was her room, to relax when she was flustered.

I’ve always found that girls share some intrinsic bond with their rooms. It’s almost as if they’re following an evolutionary nesting instinct, and their rooms become their homes. A place to grow and be safe. Along with the carefully lined-up books and the random pieces of jewellery, the hidden cache of photos and the purposefully placed candles (some of which must never be lit), are the characteristic quirks.

In time, Christie’s comfort zone became the walk-in-closet of my room. She was old enough to make love, but simultaneously too young to stay overnight, so we would spend most of our time in there, the place where we could reach out and feel the walls around us, confined to the intimacy of the enclosure. We spread out the blanket, lit the candles, and closed the door.

After a while, the humidity would build up, and this was no more apparent than in the winter when we would crack open the door and tangibly feel the chill on our skin. Opening the sun she called it, as the daylight sharply spilled on the blanket that covered us. It was the only place where we could shut out the world, the only place that felt like night.

In a relationship, sharing the night is more important than sharing fluids. Falling asleep with someone is an acceptance of trust, a way of saying that we’re comfortable enough to drift into our subconscious minds. Perhaps it was the unavailability of such a ritual that’s given the night so much significance.

Having no night of our own, we had to make due. I covered one side of a cardboard panel with glow-in-the-dark stars and suspended it from the top of the room. The panel was large enough to fill the vision, and in the darkness the closet became a microcosm of the starry sky. Even in the middle of day it was near blackness, and we’d lose track of time, huddled under the blankets with her sleeping at my chest, or lying there face-to-face, talking while I ran my fingers through her hair. Sometimes, all we would do was get together and nap.

And eventually, Christie didn’t have much trouble speaking anymore.

(This took four months to write)

I was kicking back on the couch with John
with the lights out and the music on.

Wut wut.

Anyway, we were stoned out of our skulls and it was Naked As We Came by Iron And Wine. We sat there, listening to the dulcet notes of a lone guitar lead into Sam Beam’s sugary voice, soon to be gently rounded off by his sister, Sara, as the harmony. A summer-morning-during-harvest song, or dancing in the middle of a cool rainfall.

She says ‘If I leave before you darling
don’t you waste me in the ground’
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
one of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our
ashes round the yard

And we sat there, listening, remarking to each other about how morbid it all was, yet so beautiful.

Even John was moved, but how could he not be? One of them would die but there was solice in the fact that it would be in the embrace of the other, as if neither one would want to die any other way, doing anything else.

And it felt like, for the first time in my life, John could understand a completely different side of me.

I can see it in your eyes
I can hear it in your voice
the signs are obvious
that all we had has run its course

—Matchbook, Strung Out

The hardest thing isn’t knowing this’ll end, because the certainty of such a fact was clear from the moment we started. It’s knowing that the end is coming and still falling in love that’s the hardest.

How can I distance myself when everything you do draws me closer? If only it wasn’t so fruitless to keep reminding myself that this will never last. All that can be said is that it’s worth it. Everything I’ll be feeling soon is worth another night lying next to you, worth another morning waking up with you.

So give me one more kiss, one more taste of your lips, and tell me how much you’ll miss this.

I’ve been brave enough to listen to The Postal Service lately, although my enjoyment is restricted to headphones on the bus. It’s still something that’s a little too personal to be listening through speakers, and for some reason, I’m not comfortable with others hearing the same songs that I do. It’s as if being able to hear the same trippy beats and soft voices gives other people the ability to experience the memories that the music brings to my mind; curves in a gentle face, car rides through the thick summer air, nervous fumblings on the couch, the scent of unfamiliar sheets.

They’re all good memories, nothing painful anymore, but it’s all something I’d like to keep to myself for just a little longer.