Afeto

« You are wearing all brown, for some reason, and a hat, and you look nice. And all I can see is this brown and your icy blue eyes that feel more like air, and the smell I begged to cling to your shirt but was gone by the time I got off the plane. We’re in a music venue and you’re surrounded by dark blue. And I was light blue. And I wonder if I just wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, and maybe when you imagine me you don’t see my face as well. »

I think I was imagining maybe if I had seen him at Jackson’s show with Erin, and how we built something but also simultaneously broke another thing, and there are two dangling parts swinging loose between us and it feels odd and I don’t know how I could look at him. I don’t know how I couldn’t.

I met up with him again, later that night he came over, but I’ve shuffled and swam through that memory so many times I can’t tell how much of the patchwork is of my own making, like dirtying a manuscript with oily fingers or scratching a vinyl. I started writing this when I was on the plane and then I stopped, but I wish I finished it when it was fresh. Maybe in the sifting I can find something true again.

« Went to his for dinner after Chase and my mom left. I’d never seen Chase cry before in all the thirteen years I’d known her, but I was hugging her and suddenly I felt her shaking, I thought she was laughing at first. I’ve been in awe of the flocks of birds against the white sky, they are beautiful altogether. »