Footsie

Here’s the thing I’m thinking about today, it’s the way you took your foot out of your croc and squiggled it around on top of mine and when I laughed you said, “Feels good, right?”

It sort of did and sort of didn’t — like sleeping with a dress on, like wetting your pants, like wearing a hat indoors. It was weird to be standing next to the stone wall, looking out across the park and feel your toes through the top of my canvas shoe.

I sent you a photo the next day and I remember thinking how slim my fingers looked against my skin and I remember feeling good — pale and proud, jeans unfocused on the floor below.

Gowanus

It‘s hard to write about you without writing for you (which is infinitely frustrating) and wondering if (when) (if/when) you’ll come across it. Will you wait for the three grown children? Or does the crisis come sooner, right before the wedding. There was a delay the first time, when I thought it was lost, so maybe it will happen late in life, and you’ll hit me up to be your nursing home sweetheart.

Not a chance, I’ve already practiced saying. You burned that bridge back in 2015. And I’ll shuffle back to my sterile built-in apartment and my hands will shake with emotional palsy for hours.

It’s been a year since My Big Life Event and three since we started (funny how they coincided – I think once I tried to work out whether it was to the day, but I can’t remember the result, which probably means it wasn’t a perfect fit and, as you know, nothing imperfect is worth remembering with precision). Three. Years. I used to see it as sea glass, the knot left in my chest, wearing smooth with each swoosh of blood. Now, on the other side and I do mean that physically, it has finally crumbled. Now, on the other side, those memories are simple sand, there in a pile for me to squidge my feet in whenever I feel like a good sob.

I wrote about you for My Big Life Event. I wasn’t planning to include you, but it would have been an omission I would have regretted. So, there you are in my words, the shadowed way you always were and the piecey way I’ll always remember. And always forget.