What I find amazing is that, every few years of my adult life, I’ve discovered that the words “understand” and “love” seem to mean entirely different things. At least the flux has slowed significantly: When I was still a teenager “understand” and “love” changed every six months.
Again: Ten sentences—no more, no less.
You had the smallest feet and a problem keeping polish on your nails, chipped strips of color on every toe made the digit’s tip look colored in by a crayon in a child’s hand; they lolled, those tiny feet and toes, over the edge of my bed—a safe jetty jutting out above the swamp-colored shag of the floor where I wallowed, treading dry water, and staring up at you, black statuary, backlit, a silhouette. In two years, I’d yet to see the tentacular mass of your braids unlaced, brushed out, left down; lately, because of love, I’d become afraid to gaze directly into the cerulean and sky blue of your eyes: I’d avowed eyes overrated ’til I snapped a casual black and white of yours and found them, in an out-of-focus shot, the single thing still limpid, and damned insistent on their blueness despite being bound by the range of greyscale.
I imagine it was an empathetic effort, like teaching a child to ride a bike, for you, watching me flounder and drown in the undertow of my infatuation, to take control: Which is why you stole and suddenly produced the bottle of booze; why you kept passing it back ’til I seemed drunk enough to have some Dutch courage; why you took my hand and tugged me up to your level, to the jetty of the bed, then suggested—as if we were ten—that we play a two-person version of Truth or Dare (an incredulous, insecure idiot, I was still surprised when you actually said it, “I dare you to kiss me”). I remember your breath smelling like sweet piña colada, your lips were soft as the pads on kitten’s feet, and your tongue was cold enough to cut through the grey cotton flavor of ash inside of my mouth; I remember the gradual collapse until I found myself on my back, you straddling me, my ear to a stereo speaker from which Jim Morrison whimpered about a crystal ship. When you settled on your elbows—stretching your body out atop mine, letting our thighs and waists get acquainted—I could feel the soft shape of your unfettered breasts through the onionskin-thin cotton of our Salvation Army tees; when you settled on your elbows, we repositioned our hands: I gingerly gripped your waist, so much smaller than I’d dreamt (and I’d definitely dreamt about it); no longer needed for support, you placed your palms on my cheeks, and both of us were surprised to feel wetness there, to find me crying for the first time in ten years.
You quit your kiss, backed off, and looked into me, saying, “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Facing a different direction now, no longer backlit, I saw that you blushed as you brushed a braid behind one ear as I struggled to stanch the flow of tears, replying, “I’ve just waited so long for this, and it’s so perfect”; I saw a wide smile spread across your heart-shaped face before closing my eyes and letting your lips once again find mine.
Later that summer, you took me into the country, away from city lights for the first night in my life; we snuck away from your family’s farmhouse and you set a rectangular blanket on dewy midnight grass as I lit us two cigarettes. I felt ready to soak in the moment, hoped to maybe make love amidst the fireflies and lavender knapweed, but your head was on my chest for just seconds before I coughed on my own wet breath, bolted half-upright and—thinking freak hurricane, radiation, alien invasion—shook the glowing red end of my smoke at a colossal speckled firework hanging steady in the sky and gasped, “What the fuck is that?” You laughed and patted my chest, kissed my neck, then told me in vaguer terms about the Northern Triangle: How in the summer months above the equator and away from other illumination, between the bright suns of Altair, Deneb, and Vega, one could see a small number of the billions of stars that made up a small part of one arm of the small spiral galaxy in which we belonged.
That was when I realized why I’d cried when we first kissed, the moment I truly understood it, and so I suddenly held you uncomfortably tight: Deep down, in a hidden fifth chamber of my heart, I knew that, though we felt old and fancied our personalities permanent, our lives were long and we were young; I knew that, though our love felt intense and eternal, nothing we had was built to last and no amount of effort could change that; and I knew that, despite all of this awareness, I would not, could not give you up, only wait for you to drift away, knowing well that as you went you would be taking pieces of me with you.
