the shadows will never find you

Sometimes I think about what it would have been like if we’d known one another as kids, bruise-kneed and bloody-knuckled, lapping at our charred fingers as we held them too close to the fire. The vigor of summer underneath our feet, slanted green light in our eyes; swinging skinny knees over the docks to vanish into the water, slick as eels. And the strangest part of all is that sometimes it does seem real; sometimes it does feel as if I’ve known you all this time, in another place, maybe, another world.

And in that world, maybe none of the bad things would have happened. Maybe I wouldn’t have done things I couldn’t take back. Maybe I wouldn’t have fallen in love with all of the wrong people. Maybe you’d be happier, maybe I’d be less anxious, less wary. Maybe we wouldn’t fly so deliriously high. Maybe we wouldn’t be addicted to the glow of a bottle, that heavy head tilt back when you know you’ve hit the sweet spot, when you know that for that single moment, you’re okay.

You’re gonna be okay.

And – here is where my heart tightens – maybe in another world, you wouldn’t have lost your dad, and I wouldn’t have lost my mom.

Maybe you understand me better than I understand myself; maybe the inverse is also true, and maybe that’s why we speak in code, all the little things we grasp about one another without the benefit of words. Maybe it’s why, to me, you have never been less than beautiful. So many miles between us and absolutely none between our hearts. And god, it’s so fucking cliche, but cliches are cliches for a reason – because at their core there’s often a ring of truth.

There are so many things I want. I want to kiss your cheek and hug you so tight you squeak and try to pull away; I want to bring you to the lakeshore, so we can dip our ankles in the water against the backdrop of the archaic mansions; I want to take you downtown with our stupid hats and our stupid t-shirts, sitting in a dive bar with three hundred pound men and play darts and drinking games until we’re kicked out onto the empty Detroit streets.

All of my greatest love stories have been with the friends I couldn’t bear to leave behind.

In some ways, you are my salvation from the mundane, from the dregs of depression, from the paranoia, from the false promises spoken on honest tongues – “You’ll be okay, I’ll never leave you, you’ll be okay, I don’t care what happens, I will always love you. Always, always, always. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. I am here.”

Because when you say it, I believe it.

I see things in you, beneath that crown of snow-white hair. Your head is bloody but unbowed; your eyes look towards the sky.

It honestly amazes me, how you’re always looking towards the sky.

I don’t ever want you to look down again.

if I can only say one thing,

it will have to be this.

I remember the first day we met; and that’s strange, because I can’t say that about anyone but you. You, with your leg warmers and flats and anxious smile in the middle of math class, turning to slip me a note with your palm faced-down, giant green eyes flashing with mischief, like you wanted so badly to know me — or like you already did.

We aren’t defined by what we keep with us, but by what we leave behind. 

The moon is brilliant on the lake tonight, and the water is like glass, and the wind has an atmospheric chill. Everywhere around me, the world is decaying, but fall to me has always been that season of beginning, of rebirth. And purely by luck (or not), it’s also the season I began to fall in love with you.

‘Fall in love with you.’ Most people don’t understand that, and it frustrates me, because any half-decent friendship is its own kind of love story, its own romance. The initial courting, the exhilaration, the involuntary bursts of laughter, hidden jokes, hidden smiles. I told you everything I’d ever done; you told me everything you’d ever wanted. And, I think, we loved each other all the more — it was that rare kinship, like we’d met elsewhere, in this world or the one before. 

I want to describe our friendship in words, but words can only do so much; they’re the ache, the anticipation, everything around it but the promise itself. 

It’s the air after rain, the stillness after a storm; me, curled up on your bed and you on the floor, coaxing me back into gentleness, reassuring me, yes, it’s okay, you can love who you love, we all love who we love and there’s no shame in it. My heavy eyelids flickering up and my hazel gaze, light and illuminated, catching yours: your friendship purer than what I thought I felt for her, or for him, or for her. We love who we love. Do you know how many times I’ve thought back to those nights sleeping in bed with your cats, watching horror movies until we could sleep no longer?

Maybe you do.

Language is a struggle, something that can’t express all that you hope to convey. They say love is sex, love is lust, but for me — it’s always been my closest friends and me, curled up in bedsheets, shielding ourselves from the oncoming rain. Nothing will ever kill the way I care for you.

The light will rise soon, and everything is coming up green. The world might change, but I can promise you this: nothing between us ever will.