that’s right! in a room full of people, i see only you!

years come and pass and here i still am, echoing your noises, telling your jokes, and i don’t think you understand. at least, it doesn’t seem like you do.

we play together and we make toys out of each other and i think about the shape and smell of your body even if it was a briefling hitched memory, tied up on a rope to something long and far away. i feel bad about it. i’d walk on trails for you. i’ve walked a long way, with you. i have a lot of notes of you, on a few different places, like some books, or some computers, or in my past.

we make a story together is what it is in my mind, but i don’t think you have it the same. i think you’re beautiful, and i could stare at you forever, even if you don’t have it the same. you’ve said a lot of spare open to me, a lot of gifts of joy and late conversations. i think you are the spark that my life was made out of. because everything in it points back to you. i dream about fishing with you. you give me rocks and i keep them forever.

we got healed together in a dream that one time, when everything got reset, and we could walk forward like it was new. there was a gentle warm water, like holy water, but less salty, more fresh. on its sails, we rested, and let ourselves become shaped. being a memory boy like me has ups and downs and that’s why i have to have dreams sometimes, for to belong to things like this.

and then there was that time we throwed a ball together. i think it was outside but there was a time inside too. i think you made me understand a lot of things and you make me feel like spikes inside and so scared i have to cry in the bathroom but i always come back to you. sometimes i wait a couple years for you to say something really nice to me and then i just remember it forever.

i guess i had to be most silly about someone in my life so why not you, even if you’re a kind of funny one for it to be. i mean, it’s not like i chose you for being the person i’m most silliest for it. i tried to run away but the dreams didn’t stop and i kept seeing your hair; your hair makes sense to me. i’ve been thinking about it for a couple years. i do a lot of your patterns.

sometimes you say something that really surprises me and that’s when i think you’re made out of the same stuff the world is made out of the most. i’m never so aware of the glass walls between persons as i am when i look at you, but it’s a refresher that they’re so obvious because sometimes i forget and that’s never good. i want to be myself.

at the corners of my memories are all the things that remind me of you, like the songs, or the places, the sounds, or the words, or the jokes, or the fears, or the problems, the processes, or the games. i think about you so often and i know you don’t think about me and i could live the rest of my life this way. you’re a gift that i ever get to see you. you’re a treat that we talk, ever.

i would look at dead rats with you and be happy. i would walk in the freezing cold with you and feel nice. if i got my arm cut off with you i’d look at the stump and smile.

you’re so much better than i am and i can’t tell if you believe it or not. you’re a lot cooler than me. you show me the divisions in myself, because it feels so intense, even if i know some things are a different way, somewhere else in me. all i know is when i look at you i freak out. i say something and i think man that was a dumb thing to say. i think that sometimes but way more often with you.

i think it could really just be you and me forever. that if i could pick anyone to be trapped with eternally, that i might pick you. nobody would understand, they’d never guess it. you wouldn’t guess it, but maybe you’d think it if i asked you.

i don’t feel like we’re the same people we were yesterday and now there’s a bygone but we can let it be what it wants to be. every time i see you, you’re wearing a different face, but you have the same smile. the smile makes me cry. it makes me sob tears and tears and tears and it makes me tell stories about you to everyone i meet and it makes me write endlessly.

if i could pick anything to remember, i’d remember how to meditate. if i kept my favorite memory going into the next life, i’d remember you.

it’s all true. everything i wrote is fucking true. it makes me sick. you keep me up at night. i’ve tried everything i can about you and it always comes back. it doesn’t even make sense. we never talk, i never see you, and then but someone then might say that but when we do talk, when i do see you, it gets so much more intense, and they wouldn’t think that. i’ll see you for hours, days, and it doesn’t relent. i don’t think there’s a point where it would be too much, where it’d give in. i hear someone say your name and my chest stops.

i love following you. i could stare at pictures of your back for a long time and just imagine. i love the places you lead me because i feel like the way you connect to the world is so pure. it’s funny because if you ever read this i don’t think there’s really any chance you’ll think it’s about you, because sometimes i’ll say something like this to you, like something i’d put in here, i’ll offer it out, just a little bit, just a like half-sentence, and i feel it’s always a cold or confused or middling response. like you don’t get it or you disagree. and i don’t know!

i slept in your house and you woke me up a lot because i didn’t know people could use doors that loud and you told me about what it means when an angel baby starts to grow up. it’s a big beautiful thing that’s too heavy to write about here. it’s been too long, i don’t even remember what or why the thing happened. but it was you! and it formed a lot of me!

i don’t think there’s any way i can gain more information about you. i think anything else i learn will just confuse me more, and i think that’s okay. i think it’s good. i think heaven shaped an angel and made it perfect to me, and made it confusing, so i don’t ever go getting any ideas about thinking i know what’s going on. it’s the healthiest thing i can physically imagine.

when i try to describe you to an arbitrary listener i do so like i would describe myself. some sort of faux statement that negates itself, either by way of lying, or sarcasm, or illogic, that attempts to get at a deeper truth by briefly short-circuiting the listener’s brain. i would say something like, “oh, x has actually never gone outside before.” and they would say, “oh, does x like to stay inside?” and i’d say, “no, x has literally never been outside before.” and they would say “what, does x play a lot of videogames or something? or not like people?” and i’m like “no, you’re not getting it. x just hasn’t gone outside. it’s not complicated.” and they would say “i don’t really get it” and i would say something like “the doordash bill must be crazy” and they probably wouldn’t respond.

i don’t think i’ve ever told you that i love you with those three words.

i wonder if i have a worse ratio of me thinking about person with anyone else than you. there’s no way you think about me more than once every couple weeks.

i miss you. when are we going to hang out? i appreciated your clarification that one time. i wish i could sleep in your bed, normal-style. i used to think that i would be fine to live pretty much anywhere if i could just get a good hug from you once a week. i’m genuinely sorry i got too attached. i think maybe we could’ve been better friends if i had figured something out.

i wish i could ask you if it’s all in the past, that stuff that’s in the past, but i’m pretty sure that’d make me sound like a psycho. i mean, it was so long ago that the statute of limitations is definitely up, and indicating that i still think about it regularly, like regularly when we interact is a veritable mental health ambulance siren.

you feed me cool stuff and it tastes weird. like that sauce or the drugs. thanks for being you, there’s no one else i’d rather you be. i love when people talk about you even if it does make my chest feel like it hurts. i wish i could talk about you a lot but i don’t get the chance, really.

i know that things aren’t really on the table anymore.

i didn’t expect you to say that we’re the same animal. i didn’t expect you to teach me about so much stuff. i didn’t think stimulants would make me feel that good when i talk to you. i hope you know that i’m natively inclined to echo and it’s hard for me not to. when i echo you, it’s peaceful. it’s vulnerable.

i love that you have love. you deserve everything in the world and i’d be christ on the cross if i had to for you. i literally can’t imagine how you’d feel if you read this and knew it was from me and to you.

your name sounds like music in my head and i think other people can hear it in the way i say it. i don’t know maybe that’s just conjecture.

as an alibi, i could tell people i was with you, and i know you’d back me up. i would do anything you tell me to and i might not feel safe, but i would do it in an instant.

i don’t know if i like the songs you show me because i like the songs or because you showed me. but either way, i like them. i listen to them still, even when it hurts. sometimes especially when it hurts.

i hope you know that i know how ridiculous this is. i’m more aware than anyone else could ever be. and i’ll keep writing about you until the day they shove me in the ground because my mind is full of hours and my heart is full of blood and it’s all the same shade as you.

i hope when i die i get to know the answer. i get to understand you and me, and us, and what we were, and what it all meant. i hope God tells me what was going on, he tells me what was in your head, the little secret something, or your insecurity that kept some part of you from me, or what caused your lack of interest. i’ll hear it and i’ll think oh wow i really could’ve figured that out myself. and i’ll sit in front of the heaven’s tv and i’ll watch us play together with new eyes, and i’ll get to see it from your side, and i’ll be so overwhelmed with the new sense of you that i’ll cry new tears.

HOME