I don’t know how to tell my friends about you. What am I sup­posed to say? That all we shared was some tea and talk and those four hours are rea­son I still believe in chem­istry after all the prac­ti­cal fail­ings of my past rela­tion­ships? And how do I bring you up, now that it’s been so long I won­der if you even remem­ber me?

Perhaps you wouldn’t be in my mind so often if Green Eyes wasn’t one of my favourite songs. It always takes me back to those days on the mend, when all I had was your brother — singing with a voice like it was soaked in Scotch and left to dry on a line in win­ter — to give me some­thing new to love. You were the one to give me some­thing to be excited about when it felt like noth­ing mat­tered any­more, and just as much became an inex­tri­ca­ble part of that time.

That’s why I haven’t for­got­ten you. That’s why I never will.

I can still see the cav­a­lier way you’d toss your curly hair over your head every now and then, as if you were per­pet­u­ally decid­ing how best to wear it. I’ve come to appre­ci­ate that kind of casual come­li­ness, and the fact that you were so unaware of it made it all the more endearing.

We were sup­posed to start a band of our own. I’d pick up key­board or cello if you wanted to stick with gui­tar, we’d do cov­ers of Andrew Vincent, open for house shows, and get signed to Kelp some day. Instead, all I have is a pic­ture of you danc­ing at the Raw Sugar, and what if for­ever on my lips.

I may hardly know you, but the truth is I miss you. I still want you in my life. I want to know where you’ve been and who you’ve loved, what you’re danc­ing to and how else your cre­ativ­ity has taken form. But all I can do is won­der if our paths will ever cross again.

Sitting at home on a ran­dom night, caught between the com­fort of your room and the stim­u­la­tion of peo­ple. You once told me I could always call when I said I didn’t want to be a hyp­ocrite, but I don’t know if that’s true any­more. It’s been a while. I won­der if you ever think about me, and if you do, whether it’s with fond­ness, dis­taste, or indifference.

By now you’ve prob­a­bly fig­ured out that I can never be the one to pick up the phone first, which is why it’s hard for me to believe we’ll ever see each other again. I wish there was a way we could just talk, and not have things get com­pli­cated, and not have to worry about you or me or any­thing between us.

Sometimes I think I’m strong enough, but I think of that call and that voice and the burn­ing across my skin, and even­tu­ally I real­ize I’m only fool­ing myself. Just mak­ing excuses to see you again cause I miss you so much. I’m not yet used to the fact that I can’t share these songs, these expe­ri­ences, this hap­pi­ness with you, and it’s left me feel­ing incomplete.

Even now it feels like there was so much left unsaid. Like my words were always inad­e­quate to the bur­den of my heart cause I was never able to con­vince you of how spe­cial you were and how much I loved you. But time is teach­ing me that you knew, and that noth­ing would ever have been enough.

Not long ago, I real­ized it’s not just you I can’t stop think­ing about, it’s all of my past, from insignif­i­cant instances to major events. If only you weren’t one of the only things worth remem­ber­ing, and I wasn’t try­ing so des­per­ately to forget.

I was just try­ing to get away, to remove myself from the vul­ner­a­ble way I felt — the way you made me feel — among the din and the chill. That night I learned that beauty comes in many forms. I started believ­ing I could love again, and my wounds began to heal for the first time since she told me it all had to stop.

There was such a won­der­ful moment of vul­ner­a­bil­ity flick­er­ing across your eyes when you said we hooked up¹, quickly as if to hide the fact, while plung­ing your fork into our slice of cake with a smirk on the side of your face. It’s moments like those that direc­tors dream off.

John wanted to know how it went. I told him not to ask, and we never spoke about it again. He thinks it’s because it went badly, but really it’s because every­thing went so well when I knew it was the last time I was going to see you.

Those were dif­fi­cult days. I always believed you could have saved me, until I real­ized that I needed to save myself. Not that it mat­ters. Things are dif­fer­ent now any­way. I have a ten­dency to say too much; all too often I mis­take open­ness for inti­macy, and it gets me in trouble.

I always imag­ine that you’ve fig­ured things out, and have been caught up in your own hap­pi­ness ever since. People like you were never meant to speak of heartbreak.

1. Instead of the vul­gar we fucked or the pedes­trian we slept together. [↩]