#throwbackThursday

What if we had been there at the start of summer…sidewalk chalk on blackened driveways, knees 

scabbed from a fall from a swing…the sticky sweet drip of red popsicles split so that we could 

share…the heat of an afternoon falling upon us but the world was the front of your house…the 

sidewalk to the pool…and you were my favorite person in that world, a friend that felt like a 

companion, a friend that just happened to be a girl, a friend who was different from me but we

shared so damn much…we shared time, we shared laughter like it was contagious…our skinny legs poking out of bathing suits, our hair messed up from swimming, from sweating…and our stars were the fireflies, and my flowers were dandelions and what I gave to you was as easy as handing you a seashell, or keeping a bee from following you…and our smiles were purple with kool-aid, and we thought quarters from the tooth fairy were worth sharing…and I remember the feeling I got when I went outside and I saw you coming down the walk…it was like a part of me coming back.  

What if we had been there at the start of a school year, a high school frenzy of change, of our bodies discovering and being discovered…meeting at the locker, walking down the hallway, maybe our shoulders bumping, maybe our hands discreetly glancing against each other.  Watching you come down the hallway ignited something that I hadn’t ever felt before, like a part of me stretching and pulling away from me, almost magnetic to where you stood, and my mouth would dry and I would swallow hard and when you were near me it felt like I was standing beside an electrical station with a high hum and my mind tingling.  If I saw the bra strap or even a slight opening in your shirt I could feel my heart in my chest and a hurricane in my ears, and I noticed perfume, and the smell of shampoo in your morning still-damp hair.  I saw your eyes on other boys, and felt the sting of a flame in my throat, a clenching and I cursed my skinny arms, my skinny legs, and I remember sitting with you on the hood of a car….our stars were the stars…and we spoke as friends, we spoke as just friends, and there were no flowers…but if you could cut me open, with a rusty darkened blade you’d find an explosion of colors like you’ve never seen, blossoming, pulsating, colliding and you’d maybe be reminded of circles like we used to draw on the sidewalk…rough outlines of hearts, drawn by steady hands…all surrounding my fast-beating one that still felt like a part of me was never coming back.

What if we had been there at the summer while in college, when the time and distance between us had grown into a steady expectation…maybe we collided at the pool, maybe in the bar nearby…we both had met others, known others…but never like we had known each other.  Our stars were still the stars, but the fireflies were gone…the flowers were polite smiles…but maybe, perhaps if I caught you in a moment, when you had just finished a drink and maybe your eyes were light and shining and I scribbled something on a bar napkin, just a few lines, a few sentences...and watched you read and then look back up at me perhaps I’d see a new façade…a new view…and what if what I had written reminded you of some things…of some times…and also of something unknown.  When we thought we knew each other best but realized we only knew a fraction…and that perhaps those chalk lines we had drawn together so long ago remained, faintly, but permanent, and that perhaps a part of me was never coming back because it was a part of me that I had given to you.  No flowers, no stars…just me…a portion that perhaps remained and would never be erased.   Could never be erased.  And would always remain so.