you look like a memory

we won't be friends a year from now but i love you all the same

cócegas - josé malhoa

In my head, you’re already gone. I am in a movie theater watching a movie I already know the ending of. The characters are you and me, the scene is our living room, we are laughing at something I won’t remember by the end of this. My head is on your shoulder. The room is warm. In a year, we won’t be friends anymore.

My other friends call me a pessimist, tell me that I’m mistaking anxiety for premonition, but the story has to end somehow. We are going down two different paths and I’m scared to let go, but my arm is already feeling the stress of the pull. We are going down two different paths and just the thought of separating makes my eyes water, but I know the alternative will rip me in half. There is no ending where we reach the same destination, although I would fold the world over to make our paths meet. But physics doesn’t change its rules just for love and when the time comes, I’ll be the one to let go.

It feels strange to be at peace with the fact that you’ll be gone, even if it hasn’t happened yet. I know grief so well it feels synonymous with my existence, but when it comes to you, there is no grief at all. The knowledge that you will slip away like sand in my fingers does not paint our time now differently. I laugh as loud as I would if you were going to stay; I hold your hand just as tightly. And even when you are gone, the joy will remain. I want to say: I promise I’ll remember you fondly. I don’t because it feels more intimate than a confession.

I think of all the other people that exist only as a memory now. I think of the friends I let slip away because I got too lost in my own head to remember there were people outside of it. I think of the friends I let slip away simply because we grew apart. It may have been no one’s fault, but I still wear the guilt for the both of us. I wonder if they know I still think of them when I walk past the places we went to together; I still do, I always will. I’ll think of you when I walk past our old apartment.

Sometimes I draft a text but let the regret of separation delete it. My phone has become a graveyard: names like tombstones, deleted texts like ghosts. I try to remove numbers from my contacts, burial after burial after burial, but when my fingers reach the knife, it won’t commit to the murder. And so they remain. And so you’ll remain: a ghost of a ghost of a memory. I wonder if you’ll forgive me for this half-death. (I know you will). I want you to know change is hard for me; I need to let go of the pain, it’s not worthwhile to hold on. (Do you forgive me for letting go? I know you do). I try to replace it with gratitude: how fortunate I was to have been loved, no matter how brief.

Gratitude becomes the color with which I paint your memory; this is intentional. Change is hard for me becomes change is a human inevitability, but I can see how your presence has guided the trajectory. I think of how I am a patchwork quilt of all the people I have loved and of all the people who have loved me. When I drink coffee, I feel the warmth of the girl who first introduced me to it. When I see a sunset, I feel the laughter of the friends who used to watch with me. When you are gone, you will still hold space in my heart. There are words I say in your voice.

I come home and tell you about my day while you cook us dinner. I am lying on the couch in our living room and I am waving my arms as I describe the day’s ups and downs. You are nodding as you stir fry some vegetables, the smell filling the space between us. I finish telling my story, you bring over two plates, we eat. I rest my head on your lap. The future doesn’t hold as much weight as you do.

I want to tell you something new, but there are only so many ways to say I love you. You look like a memory. In a year, you’ll be gone. I don’t feel harshly about it.

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This post has an additional On Writing.

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