Near You

You let me live near you, but not with you.

“Promise me nothing,” you said. I secretly promised you everything, which was maybe my second mistake. “Forget Thailand,” you said. I forgot nothing.

Guilt made it okay to become what I’d wanted to be in the first place: an extension of you, something inseparable, a limb of some value like an arm or a foot. How I admired you. Tiny and indestructible, full of energy, like a universe set to explode. And the way you drew people towards you, rearranged places and events to fit like cobblestones beneath your feet. Did you know how awkward I felt next to you? Did you know that I tried to imitate you, hoped that with enough time I would become like you? I think maybe you figured it out, and despised me for it.

But for a while good times came back, aided by hashish and boxes of sangria, sand-baking on a crowded beach, hungover and napping on the train to Sitges. Small coffees in Plaça Reial, walks down Las Ramblas and afternoon sex and tea on your terrace, the sounds of Barri Gòtic rising, making love to the barking of dogs, harmonica players, the smell of piss and bohemians rising from the living city.

We loved the way we sent texts, in lowercase letters, not trying to mine eternity, not planning a life or even a trip to the grocery store. Just: hi how ya doin? good you? Time to: fuck, eat, fuck, sleep, eat, have coffee, go somewhere, fuck, eat, fuck, sleep (but underneath, something difficult: trying to live alone after you made it hard to wake up, hard to breathe, hard to lie on a beach drinking beer. To love something besides you: impossible).