(no subject)
Hi, I saw you today. In a flyer for your best friend's political run. You were off to the far right, the tall, big guy with the soft smile and glasses, the face I looked at every day for five years until I had to untangle my spider web from yours. I miss you. In a soft, gentle way like rocks weathered by rain, sleet and current. "You look good", I want to say. "You look the same", I want to say.
I think about hugging you, about the way you used to spin me around when you hugged me, especially at the beginning of our relationship when we were both two rough rocks on a pebbly beach brought together by the wind. "I'm doing alright", I want to tell you while we sit under a tree and I try not to cry because the part of me that misses you so much is also the part of me that knows the destruction, the separation, the weathering was necessary.
I want to hear about your adventures. Not your dating adventures but about your job and whether you went back to school or not. I want to hear about your niece. She's...turning 3 in a few months, wow! I want to hear about your mom and your dad, and the latest movie you all watched together. I want to hear about how you've adjusted to Baltimore and how you feel when you're alone, and whether or not you've kept up with cycling. Have you heard the new Bad Bunny and Aventura song? It's really good.
There's a supermarket by my apartment that has so many Mexican treats. They have the cebollines that you were always looking for, the ones you said you wanted to cook but never actually did.
I think about you when I try a new bbq sauce. Actually, I don't eat bbq, it's way too tied to you and not tied to me at all, so I nod when I hear about it and smoking and bbq sauces, and nod and think of you. I think you'd like it, the supermarket.
I made your mom's strawberries and crema the other day. They didn't taste as good as hers, the ones I used to eat in your kitchen while we watched Caso Cerrado. Did you know it's streaming? On UnivisionNow. I saw it yesterday but I don't think I can watch it, it's tied too close to you and not tied to me at all.
I've been getting into history lately again. I'm reading the new Andy Weird book - have you read it? I think you'd like it. I'm trying to get back into art history but every time I do I think about how you'd be interested in it, maybe, and the sadness engulfs me until I pause the Youtube, take a breath, call out your name and listen to the silence. Pieces of you are still stuck to me with the rubber cement you recommended once in passing. I buy packs of 6 now on Amazon every few months. I use it for collaging - I've gotten into making art lately.
You once told me that writing would be my salvation so I grab the rosary and shove it down my throat, and write about the way it tastes.
Woven into this letter is a faint song of I miss you. Of I'm sorry. Of you were my best friend. Of "do you remember the way the light shown into 2203 from the balcony?" I once sat on the floor and watched it dance on bubbles from a bubble toy you brought home once.
I miss you. It was nice seeing you today. I hope you're doing well.