To write in past tense
I knew you when I was a little less than fourteen and a little more awkward about myself. You were a friend’s cousin, a face by the doorway at a party where you later showed everyone you could play the guitar. What was your band called then? It was a punk band, you sounded like Rancid, you said, and I told you I didn’t like Rancid. I said I liked the Smiths and you laughed because Smith was your family name. You told me I sounded like a lawyer. You asked if you could kiss me. You liked to slip little notes with drawings on the CDs you made for me. “Listen to track three. It’s how I felt when I saw you the first time.”
You, I knew you when I was a little older, a lot more pretentious, and still laughably young, remarkably foolish. You were also in a band (I wonder why I was drawn to musicians) and I heard your songs on the radio a few times. I didn’t like them. You thought I was brave. You liked comic books and Steve Vai; and you made a song for me, that one I liked, that one you might have used in your second album, but I don’t remember at all how it sounds. You gave me a book about Dante and I gave it away.
And you, you had a camera instead of a guitar and I listened to you talk about aperture and shutter speed and lighting, and I couldn’t stand you, I hated your hair. You showed me magazines with your pictures in them, pictures that had won awards, pictures of prettier women. You told me you wanted to take my picture, and I let you, and that was a mistake.
You; everyone here probably still knows who you are.
I am fine, spectacular actually, the house has started to forget about the flood, thank you for asking. Funny how you all ended with “it’s been a long time.”
But it doesn’t feel like a long time at all; it feels more like it never happened. This morning, as I got up to reach for my glasses, he pulled me back to bed and told me I was beautiful. Sunlight was soft everywhere. So were his lips. So were his eyes. So were the sweet slowness of the room and the contentment of my heart. This is a loveliness I do not tire of, a desire that will not retire. I fear, and how I fear, the day I have to write about him in past tense.
(I hope that day never happens.)
