To All The Friends I've Loved Before: 04

Thursdays, and crepes, and you

To All The Friends I’ve Loved Before is a collection of unsaid promises to the people who have meant the most. The friends I’ve lost, the relationships I’ve ruined, the unspoken words between two people who never had a chance.

Photo by Matthew Hamilton on Unsplash

I have this habit I can’t seem to shake, where I adopt all the colors of you, one by one until they bleed into me. Little morsels of time, stolen moments, and the things I can never shake until I’ve embraced all my favorite parts, cloaked in the secrets of who we once were.

Like the way you said “important” and the day I decided I liked it. Pink shirt, white shades, crepes on a long wooden table.

It’s why I fly out of bed before the sun, past this city’s endless hills and winding roads, and the palm trees that don’t belong. Past the Mission and the Heights and all those commuters who never seem to be in a rush.

Why isn’t anyone in a rush?

And now you’re looking at me, and you’re talking to her and you’re burning up this whole room. You don’t know it yet, but you’re about to change my life. So I’ll give you my Thursday mornings and order my $14 crepe and the latte that I can’t afford. Pretend not to see the camera, pretend not to see you walking across the street. Hugs. Hands. The garage around the corner. Slow walks until I run into you.

It’s true what they say, you know. Micro-climates really are a thing.

It’s why I race away from the Peninsula and the life I didn’t ask for, why I show up every time you call, are you okay and what can I do and I’m so sorry about your dad. But it doesn’t excuse what you did. And you can’t forget what I said.

And then you invite me back, I wouldn’t miss it, but the streets are all wrong and the temperature isn’t right and I miss the Fall and the brick and the green of New England.

Those palm trees never did belong.

So I’ll take a piece of you with me when I leave, and I’ll look for you in every torn-up venue, every city busker with a ukulele and a voice that could shake up the whole world if only they’d let it. Pieces of you, woven into me long before we ever lost touch. I suppose I knew even then, it couldn’t last forever.

Important.

and card games

and palm trees.

It never was the same. Back when it was fresh, and new, and small. When long wooden tables held crepes and lattes and dreams and friends I swore I would never lose.

A rejection, an invitation, and then I was home.

Did you know you changed my life that day?

I hope.

But now, you do.

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