I remember you.
I always remembered you, you were always there of course.
We used to sit on the same concrete divider, there were tables mere feet away but we sat on the stone. I used to creep on what book you were reading. I would have the same one the next week. At first I thought you didn't even notice, but then I started to notice jeans. You always used to write on your jeans, drawing swirls and symbols I didn't recognize. One day I sat, peering over the book you read in two days, desperately trying to feel what it made you feel, have it consume me the way it did you, when I noticed something new on your jeans. It was a rough sketch, brash in red sharpie. My earrings. The earrings I wore every other day, the ones I made with copper wire while thinking about how gentle your hands looked. I remember learning that you noticed me too.
I remember the way you kissed me. You always kissed like it was a secret, like I scared you. You scared me too, the way you made my heart pound.
I knew you by your steps and by your toes. Your toes pointed inward, like you were permanently nervous. You stepped lightly, always lightly, until we were alone. When we were alone you bounced and shook the world. You shook my everything.
The day I saw you break still shakes me. The day I told you I loved you and you called me a liar. It was the same day I told you I didn't understand "The Iliad". I went to your room, one day before, and I sat next to you the way I had a hundred times, but this time found you sad, sad and clutching a book.
It was a second hand book that had long since lost its cover, lost its face, and looked to me like it deserved rest. When I tried to take it you asked me not to touch it. I wondered for a moment if you had murdered it, taken its face, and needed to grieve. So I sat beside you and tried to feel your heart through the thin air between us. When you finally looked at me you looked no happier, no better off for my company. I asked you if I should leave, and you told me yes, but to take the book he clutched, and to return tomorrow. I did as you asked. I wanted to understand your sorrows more than ever.
I read the faceless book in one sitting. I did not sleep that night. I read every one of your notations. I burned your underlined passages into my dreams. I stared for an hour straight at the illustration of Achilles and Patroclus on the back cover and the mirrored drawing you penned on the reverse. It was a drawing of me, me and the creature you always drew in place of yourself.
I didn't know which of us you believed to be Achilles.
I didn't know what made you sad, I didn't know what the drawing meant, I didn't feel your pull, I didn't feel your emotion, I read of ancient heroes I've always known and I didn't understand. Book after book after book I didn't understand you. I told you I didn't understand.
I remember seeing you cry for the first time. I hadn't a clue how to fix what I had said. The marble pillar where I had balanced you was cracking. It was my fault. I had you perched too high while I stood strong on the ground. I remember thinking that tears belonged to you, that you felt more than I ever did so true joys and sorrows were yours to drown in.
I told you I loved you and you told me I didn't.
I believed you.
You were always there, I was always looking, and I never understood you.
But I still remember you.
