We used to worry about the silliest things. You and I.

Do you remember our first morning upstate, you pulled the curtains open on me and I curled up and away from the mid-morning. How you laughed. How I put one hand over my chest and the other over my eyes and fought my way back into the dream I had been having. And you said, what is this! You said, I love this you! You lay on top of me and breathed on my face.

We made love seven times that weekend because seven is my lucky number. Your spine shook. We showered and you washed your hair, telling me that the most personal thing about a person is the way they dry off after bathing. You put soap on my shoulders and watched while I stood under the water, rinsing off. The night you left I got into the shower to be alone to cry and immediately regretted it. Soaping up I felt like I was washing you right off my skin and I hated myself for it. Me, I start with the towel against my arms, first right and then left; then my legs, first left and then right. And then my belly and my back, and very carefully the nape of my neck, and the space behind my ears. And then I fold the terrycloth around my whole body in a hug. It's lonely, drying off without you.

We stood in the rain in those ridiculous blue ponchos, and you were kidding, but I really did feel baptized that day. Like I'd unzipped the sleeping bag of myself finally and climbed into the sheets of a shared bed. Like finally I could calm down and be honest. Like it didn't matter that the sky was covered in a layer of clouds because I knew that up above the sun was shining. Like finally I could say everything- even though I didn't.

When you and Asher lit that bonfire in his backyard and smoked it, and afterwards when we were sitting on his couch, when you were fighting with my hand against your leg, that is when I fell in love with you. Not for the first time and not for the last. I looked at you in the blue wash of television and saw you at every age. Then in a lull you turned to me and asked me, What are you doing in a year? And I wanted to say, In a year I'll be in your bed and that is a promise I'm not strong enough to break.

(in collaboration with wag scala)