from August of 2008
I knew that I did not love you.
You were so young—you always were—and I didn’t realize our differences at the time. Even the light smoke of my cigarettes made you too dizzy to stand on your own. I didn’t know how much you needed me.
We took trips to the beach. Afterwards, while I washed the sand from my legs and fingers, you began spreading your findings across my living room floor. There is still sand in the carpet. Shocked, I asked what you were thinking. Holding a bottle of glue in hand, you insisted that you were fixing things. None of the pieces matched, but that didn’t stop you. It never did.
When the sun turned everything into liquid, you started taking pictures. My hands, knees, ankles, back. I tried to keep you at bay, to direct your lens elsewhere, but it was to no avail. That was how you became the only person to see my scars. That was how we saw each other naked the first time.
Despite your age, you became an adult before I did. I remember the night you came over after that first time. You rubbed your face, tired and forcing your smile. I thought about the fact that you did not sleep with him, although you could have. You probably even wanted to. I watched you climb onto my couch and wind yourself into the corner. I stayed far away. I didn’t know that you wanted to be touched, held, reminded that you were solid.
You smelled like smoke some nights and it made me cringe. Though I carried the smell myself, I was used to the sharp, sweet scent of apples on your skin. I liked to breath you in deep, when you would let me. When your smell turned from a crisp orange-red to murky grey, I didn’t tell you that I noticed. And it was only sometimes, only when you were out with other boys, boys who kept you on their couches, just inside the door.
At nights I would wake up to you whispering poetry from dog-eared pages. I never let you know that you had woken me. I didn’t want you to stop. The tense verses and end stops helped me relax when you were around. They helped me sleep when you were knotted next to me, so close, afraid to brush against me in your dreams. Some nights I would wait, awake with my eyes closed, and wish that you would, but I only ever felt your breath as you sighed someone else’s name.
When the trees lost their colors and everything became muted, we followed suit. I saw you only in passing: in parks and trains, between our outlined territories. You didn’t smile any more. Beads had replaced the camera around your neck and thin fabric outlined the spaces that men who were not me claimed. I found poetry in the piles of leaves that no one bothered collecting from the small yards around the city. You had disconnected from me, and from yourself.
By the time a year passed, I realized that my bed felt too large and empty without you tied in the blankets. Apples were not as sweet as they used to be and even my once-cherished cigarettes had lost their appeal. I saw parts of you in the backs of strangers, books of poetry and stacks of old magazines, but it had been too long to recognize you whole. You surprised me by appearing, in one piece, at my front door. I, who always had something to say, couldn’t think of a single word.
I did not know that I loved you.
