Naomi ate an apple and messaged me about it.
For her to enjoy something so ordinary, and then choose to share that moment with me, felt like an honour.
To this day, I think of that apple as proof of why we are friends —quickly followed by all the reasons we shouldn't be. She hates swimming, dislikes animals and considers nature walks her own special brand of torture. But calling those red flags would be an injustice.
Naomi sits on the jetty and watches me swim. She pets Ollie despite her allergies, because Ollie is mine. She patiently waits for me to finish feeding the passive-agressive stag. Joins me on strolls through the overgrown castle gardens (and uses my body as a shield against insects). During the months I was too anxious to leave the house, she never complained about visiting, not when it took her two hours by bus. Not once.
Everyone deserves a Naomi. A friend whose love shows in quiet compromises.
Of course, there are times she frustrates me, times when her obstinance gets under my skin. She probably feels the same about me.
And on a random Tuesday afternoon, when she read my Amsterdam to-do-list, I lied through my teeth. One of the bulletpoints read: Write letters to my parents, my brother, my Swede, and my platonic soulmate. Naomi asked if I would write her a letter too. And I said, yes, yes I will —and that was a lie.
I throw the word love around with reckless abandon; anything less feels like admitting I fall short. Love, to me, has always been calibrated to absence, to missing. I miss my family. I rarely miss anyone else. My test is simple: would I miss them if I moved across the world? Would they cross my mind? If both answers are yes, that's love.
Twenty-seven years since my floundering feet entered the world and I realise I was wrong. Because Naomi only conjures one yes, and still, I write this with tears smudging every word. Love is more than missing, more than yeses. It's the Ollie-shaped hole in my chest, the fruit I never ate but tasted in my best friend's sharing. It's the way she sits on a jetty and gladly watches me do the thing she hates.
I'm not a good friend. I try to be, but I get caught up in myself, in my bindings. I won't write you a letter, but I'll write you a poem, my darling. An attempt at loving you the way I can. Not love in its grandiose form. Not loud or full of missing, but love in the apple.
YOU ARE READING
Blood Orange Periphery
PoesíaMy suicide had been two years in the making when I decided not to follow through at the last minute. Over the past decade, I've written poems, books, short stories, fanfiction and hundreds of thousands of words, but nothing felt complete. This coll...
