It happened too fast, almost, for me to remember. And still I’ve captured it like an animal trapped in amber, turning it over and over in my hands, trying to make sense of the little things that change us forever. I recall that first day with all the vividness of youth: you, dark-haired and quiet, a bag slung over your narrow shoulder, the way your winter-dark eyes narrowed just slightly as you looked at me. Something turned over in my chest, dizzy and strange, forcing it full of hollow space -- and I knew at once that you were the story I would never be able to tell.
I was too young to know that this would not be the last time. The curve of your shoulders like wings, the slope of them unburdened and the sprinkling of freckles like cinnamon, the weight of all your silence. The glint of hard white teeth when you smiled. “Am I okay?” I asked the priest, at that point all wariness and unspoken fear. “Is it okay that I love her?”
I remember: the two of us, curled together half-asleep at some college performance, your lashes like gossamer against your cheeks and your mouth half-parted, feline even at rest. I could have told you everything, I see now. You were the tripwire, the inevitable parting, the innocuous ending of us both. I wanted to crawl into you. I was tired of looking at girls with dark hair and dark eyes; I was tired of looking at girls who looked just like me. And still there you were, that sharp gasp of happiness in my short life, your shyness obscured by shame. This was me, and that was you, and these were all the words we left unspoken:
Want. Alone. Hunger. Loss. I wondered how many lives I’d lived before I ended up in this one - looking into you like a mirror, the reflection just slightly skewed. The fullness of your upper lip and the curve of your impossibly dark eyes, the ash-dark hair to your shoulders. I cut mine just after you did. I thought that if I did that we could become one another, grow closer than we ever had. I was wrong.
All that suffering teaches you is that you are capable of suffering. The broken-hearted girl and vulpine-faced liar, the yearning quiet dreamer - these were all but different parts of me. And you took them away one by one.
I measure love by how it ends. I remember laying with my head in your lap, how your loam-dark hair haloed your face as you leaned down to kiss me, sugar-honey-sunshine-sweet. The summer world was fragrant with blooms and woodsmoke and sweat; when I reached up to pull you back down towards me, you laughed and shook your head. It’s true that when you start to think of the beginning it’s the end, and it’s true that there was something in your eyes - dark as polished jet - that warned the same. Don’t come too close, you were saying - don’t come so close that this will hurt.
So it ended, in northern travel shops and motel bedrooms, in the unsparing light of an autumn wood. It ended in bookstores and sand cliffs and the swoop of a bony arch; it ended in sunshine and stone. I didn’t know you loved it here so much, I told you.. You’d shrugged. You never asked, you said.
You left and I knew this would be the last time. But sometimes the people we love come back. They disguise themselves as strangers, as those we have not met, as the ones who make up the world. I try to catch a glimpse of you - curly black lashes and the scar along your cheekbone - but it’s like holding water cupped in my hands - I lose you every time. I crouch over the summer grass and remember your skin shaded with sweat, black hair oiled from exertion, the timid gleam of your smile. Memories are not food, but they will feed you. And every time I remember you, twin dark eyes and trembling grin, they do. They do. But I don’t want memories of black eyes flashing to mine in sunlight, your hand in mine on the sand-golden hills, the feel of your mouth trailing along my jaw. That isn’t what I want. I want you.