Each night I abandoned you to the dark. In the shaded black room, redolent with swooning blooms, you’d curl into me like a child. I came to memorize your voice like I’ve tried so hard to forget his: hoarse and low like a boy’s, sweet-edged like a girl’s, the tang of metal like regret underneath your tongue. You told me once that you only write when you’re in love. I believed it; at this point, I believed everything you said. And that was my mistake.
I thought that my devotion was measured by how much I could give to you. Confession was courtship and faith swiftly became hunger; you missed me far more than you could ever hope to love me. Your words were a liturgy — and you struck me blind.
You were so much like him, and in response I turned my face toward you with all the desperation of the starving. Back straight, knees bruised, your offering of kindness like a holy rite. I didn’t know to name it what it was until it was far too late.
I was trying to outrun something — someone — else. The resemblance between the two of you wasn’t physical. The sameness was somewhere hands couldn’t reach. Maybe that’s why I was so adamant in never asking for too much; touching you could turn me to stone.
Instead, now I turn you into words. Dark-eyed. Clever. Evasive. I tricked myself into believing I could describe in language what can only be understood without it. The two of you were twins in every way that mattered and every way that didn’t; you were precious to me before I even knew what that meant. And how can I blame you for being careless when my fault was always that I cared far too much?
It hurts me now to consider how thankful I am for every one of your kindnesses. Sometimes I wonder if I went to you because I couldn’t go to him; I mistake your echo for his voice. Fear is terribly close to grief, I’ve found.
Now I have two ghosts and one story, the gaze of my memory just slightly skewed. Both of you were strangers that I’d known before, and this wasn’t solace; it was anything but. You were gentle towards me in an ordinary way and I called it holy. All untouchable things eventually are.
Animals become meek in captivity and unsurprisingly, so did I. I felt the pressure of your hand in my short untangled hair, your thumb over my frenetic pulse. If this was servitude then it was a most willing kind. I don’t know if I loved you – I just know that losing you felt familiar. As if you were someone else’s ghost.