Last We Met

I remember the last time we met.

It was... spring.

Of course, spring!

I remember the twinkling in those eyes of yours as you approached me, fist full of flowers, the vivacity of which exploded in every corner of our little run-down, sodden town. The air was still deciding whether to warm or to freeze, and thus, you'd sported both shorts and long sleeves, and I'd laughed at you until my eyes got heavy with tears and I could do nothing more but wrap my arms around your shoulders lovingly.

Or was that the last time?

No... no! I remember!

I'm so foolish.

It was summer.

I remember how the sun caught the light of your hair as it screamed down to earth, brushing every bank and line of your thin, angled body, you yelling in protest as I wrapped my wet, sandy body around you and your tuxedo. “It feels hotter in here, trust me,” you'd said at my complaint of the over 100 degree weather, detaching me distastefully, before brandishing a smile down. “Sister's wedding, it is. I'd bring you if you weren't traipsing around town in your underwear!” I'd tried to explain to you, through hiccuping laughs, that a bikini was not underwear. You stared at me as if you couldn't find a difference.

Wait... sister's wedding?

No, that wasn't the last time.

How could I ever forget?

It was fall.

I remember how your eyes and face seemed to reflect every color of the shedding trees, staring up in wonderment as if it were your first fall in a seasonal home. Your nose was blue and your fingers were freezing, but as we walked down an abandoned street, slick with rain and rotting leaves, I knew that I'd never, ever be able to let go. “You should have brought gloves,” I'd told you, rubbing your hands in between mine. I let you borrow my gloves – if borrowing was sticking your fingers in my gloves with my hand. I watched as your brown eyelashes raised, slightly, assessing the setting sky, breathing in the smell of coarse, dying leaves that seemed to excite you so. I told myself that fall must be your favorite season, and mentally joked that I must be your favorite person, if you allowed me to share it with you.

…

But I know that wasn't the last time I saw you.

It wasn't in fall, or summer, or spring.

Of course I remember. I wouldn't be that foolish.

It was winter.

I know it was winter because I had to wear piles and piles of jackets, though it did nothing to ease the cutting cold deep inside of me. I know it was winter because the dew on the dying grass had long frozen solid, and I could see the steam of my ragged breaths.

Some man was reading something that I didn't dare listen to, words and promises that I'm sure your ears would have soaked up. The only thing your ears would soak up now, however, was dust.

They'd lowered you down, gently, carefully, in a fitted tuxedo covered in flowers.

Your nose and your fingers were blue, I remembered, from the service when I'd stared at you, and you'd not even had the decency to look back.

I wondered if it was hotter down there, in the seasonless hole in the ground that proclaimed your name above it and claimed your body below it. I wondered, as I tried to remember how to swallow and breathe, if you knew there was now a matching hole in my heart that also dubbed your name.

I'd sat through a two hour long funeral, where people who hardly knew you spat out things that weren't true, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs that the two of us would have made fun of, had it been any other day. They went on and on about a life you'd wished you could escape, and praised you for things you'd never wanted to do. They left out all the important things.

They left out that fall was your favorite month, and that you used to stare at it as if the leaves were speaking to you in their gentle, whispering descent to the earth.

They didn't mention that you were modest to your core, and disliked the show of skin in today's society, but you'd never made a fuss about it – just focused on the face and grinned politely.

They had no idea that even in your allergies, ones that made your nose swell and redden and your eyes puffy and teary, you'd run throughout our stupid little broken state to gather every different type of blossoming flower you could find, just to see someone smile when you presented your homemade bouquet.

They didn't know you used to lay out at night beneath the stars with a gleam in your eyes that reflected the breathing night sky, and talk about a family who hated you that you loved, and your thoughts of one day, taking to the world, and discovering strange new things, strange new planets of experiences and lives, but the only thing that had stopped you was that you didn't have someone to do it with.

Nobody spoke of how I'd turned to look at your body, framed in moonlight, sighing at the thought, and dreamed of being that someone.

No.

None of those things were said, because I hadn't been asked to speak at your funeral.

I tried my best not to blame them too much.

Nobody had known that I loved you.