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I went out with C today and said goodbye. We smoked while dragging our feet in a slow walk across a path in the park where we first met again last year after an age of separation. I sat between his legs on a table, and he asked me how school's going. It took a split second for me to register; he never asked me that before. I ran my nails over his stomach, and he chuckled. Sometimes he leaned forward, resting his head on my shoulder and breathing deeply as if he needed to leave right then. Then we walked, and we touched underneath the shadow of a tree that he said was maybe twelve years old, and I breathed against his neck, wondering if I'd ever be able to forget how he smells. We gave and took away from each other, alone in a car in the parking lot we always go to, unaware for the most part of the night around us.

It was too short. Everything has been too short.
I am, I think, afraid that we didn't have enough time to find the strength to last.

Sometimes I get the creeping feeling that maybe if I was able to just let go, really let go, then maybe we could have had more time; maybe if I was more open and less expectant, maybe the tension on which our relationship sat for so long could have dissolved sooner. Sometimes I begin to regret.

But then I remember the way he made me feel and the whys behind the urgent questions. I remember that I asked him things, knowing that he would never be able to answer, building frustration within and without, trying to understand him, trying too hard to open him to me. Then I remember his resistance and his anger, the quiet force that never fails to push my hands away, making me take a step back. I remember that most of my memories of us aren't happy, only beautiful in the sense that at least he and I felt, loved, needed, in varying degrees, almost never meeting in our energy, yet continuing for those few moments in which we did. Because those moments were like the quietness of a perfect, perfect night, like the volatile beauty of a dirty, half-opened window, like the feeling of his breath hitching against my skin or the accidental brush of my hair against his collar. We were always as bright or as dark as our understanding of each other.

In the car, on the way home, I watched his hands light up intermittently underneath the pale, reaching street lights. I tried to memorized the way his knuckles are so pronounced and the bump on the side of his wrist that's more noticeable than most people's. The little swell of bone that I always kiss. I love the way his fingers are thin, slightly fanning out toward the tip. I love the way he drives with his legs relaxed and apart, reminiscent of some sexual overtone and entirely comfortable. I love the way he'll look at me randomly as he drives and take his hands off the wheel to scare me. I love so many things about the way he walks, touches, listens, reaches out; yet I will never say I love him. And he will never say he loves me, although he did tell me that he's thankful.

When he said goodbye, he hugged me and kissed the edges of my lips, and I told him to stay safe. He laughed a little and didn't respond, not looking upset by the fact that we'd never have this again, but at the same time emanating a particular shade of yearning that made me feel as though time is the most corrosive force in life. The last picture in my mind is of him, smiling out of the car, hair swept across his eyes.








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