“You know when you love someone at a certain point, you love them so much?

“Like, a real lot,” I continued, “And then, you remember them as they were then, and you never forget them as they were then.”

I glanced upwards, hoping to see your eyes cast a blue sky over me, “So, they might have been 16. And then, they’ll always be 16, at least in your mind. And they’ll always have the same haircut, and the way of talking, and the same crooked teeth.” I looked at you for a reply. “Well,” I said, “That’s kinda how I feel about you.” I didn’t get a reply.

I wish I could’ve told you what was on my mind, and that you would have understood it. You would’ve at one point— really understood what I was going through. I liked you because of that, how you knew what I was feeling, sometimes without me even saying anything: once, late at night, we watched gymnastics on TV and a girl held two sticks with ribbons on the ends of them. The ribbons danced around each other, arcing in vivid textures, and I felt like I was seeing us in them, ourselves twirling around in same movements. Of course that all changed once you were 16; I guess that was why I still remembered you at that age. It was the age I wanted to remember you at. I’m not sure what happened after that: I mean, I knew, I was there. I know all the facts. I just didn’t know the feelings behind them. Somewhere along the way you’d been replaced by a plastic cast with a beating human heart, and I couldn’t get through any more.

I guess it might have been stress that made you start smoking weed. Exams do that, I know. I didn’t react so badly to them, but then it was different for me. I always knew I was going to fail them anyway; you weren’t so sure. You didn’t have the best results, but you had good ones. More dangerous in a way: good enough—but there’s always the opportunity for them to go wrong, so you were stressed. And you’d done drugs before, everyone had. Where we lived, it was the only thing to do. Smoking was just an everyday thing: teenagers sitting outside in wooded areas, rolling their muddy-brown tobacco over the shining green leaves, desperately fighting against windy nature to finish it. You couldn’t get away from it, but then if you lived here you wouldn’t really want to. Pills too, those inviting tablets with hearts adorned onto them like scars of war. And you just took them, you needed it. Not while you were revising, of course. Not during study leave, you said. No, never on the day when you had an exam, you lied. Reassurances that I never believed in, that soothed me, that stopped me from worrying.

You didn’t stop afterwards; you said you were celebrating, getting it out of your system before A-levels, before going to college.  Not the one you wanted to go to, but it was a 6th form, something better than what I achieved. At least you still visited me while I worked in the Co-op in town, sometimes. It was weird to see you after I had come back from holiday, and you had your sunken eyes and ropey, greasy, hair; somehow different but somehow the same. Like an old photo taken at a party, that hadn’t come out right; like searching through photo albums of your parents and there’s something you recognise there—the way they look at the camera, caught off-guard—but it’s hidden under strange hair and nostalgia.

You loved me though, you really did. No matter how awful you looked, you always looked better when you were with me. That might be egotistical, but people always said so. Of course, the drugs took some of that away. But I knew you loved me, that our hearts drummed the same rhythm: you said that once, in a letter you sent me, and I lay awake that night hoping the frantic beating of my own heart wasn’t you slamming into a concrete floor. You liked sending me letters because it was easier to say what you felt, you always told me. Or maybe it just eased the guilt you felt for not seeing me. You didn’t see me as much as you used to, and in a way our time together slipped away without me even realising it.

But you loved me.
We split up. Kinda.

I looked at you, hoping to see one last glance that showed some regret about the end of our relationship. I didn’t dump you, you didn’t dump me. There wasn’t even a mutual decision, not one that was spoken. We just moved on. I realised— I thought– that I couldn’t be with you. You didn’t—I didn’t think—you cared. It was a break-up of no remorse, a breakdown of communication more than anything, and maybe that's why it didn't last: I find more and more now days that you need hatred to get anything done right.

I turned myself round so that I was facing you properly. This needed to be said: there was no point putting it off now. “I didn’t really want to split up with you, you know. It was just…the right thing to do. You know that, right? It was something that had to be done, but not something that I wanted to be done. Yeah?”

I felt horrible. I turned away slightly and said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, ever. There was…you know, the hole you get inside you? That hurts, not really painfully, but you notice it hurts. I didn’t sleep for ages afterwards. I still don’t sleep much. Everyone said I was different. I don’t talk to many of our friends anymore. My parents were really worried about me, said I was a different person. I didn’t eat much either, not until we got back together.”

We did get back together, for a few more months. It was worse, but I couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t quit you.  It was like I wasn’t a person without you, that I was incomplete. I felt like a shell. One time, way back, after you came back from holiday you bought me a shell necklace and I told you, “Shells are just the skeletons of sea-creatures, you know,” and wore the dead bones around my neck, sleeping on them at night so I’d wake up with circular ridges in my chest.  

Then I found out that you were on heroin. You said nothing intra-venous, nothing in the blood. You promised me that while you looked me in the eyes and held my hand, underneath the shade of the forest where we got back together—where we had our first kiss. But you did, of course, you lied, of course, you broke your promise, of course. I knew then I had to get out of the relationship and away from you. I’d never see you again, I said.

I opened my lips again, almost forcing the words out in a mess of splintered sentences: “I didn’t sleep for weeks the second time. No, I didn’t, not really. I just kinda drifted. It was worse for the first three days. My parents thought I had the flu. I just stayed it bed, I didn’t eat until my stomach cramps made me. My legs hurt so much. It was like I couldn’t function without you. I threw up. Threw up, all over my carpet. Just thinking about what had happened, I guess,”—I could still remember the yellow sludge, mainly water, splattered on the carpet that slowly soaked in its irregular shape, and knowing that I was too tired, weak and apathetic to even think about cleaning it up—,“And fevers, shaking from heat. I hated those three days.”

And the time when I looked around, and saw the 16-year old you smile back and watched as your eyes sunk down and became dull, as your hair slowly matted itself and become limp, as your skin dried and cracked like a river in a drought, then turned grey after your eyelids shut and you rolled slightly and I screamed so loudly and for so long I didn’t even realise that my parents were holding onto me.

But I was over you. Until you dragged me back here. “Thanks,” I said, and then paused, “Thanks for this. I’ll go now.” I pulled myself up, stretched; and realised how tired and hollow my legs felt. It felt like there was a chasm between all of my ligaments and it took an eternity to take each step, the message of walk running down a neuron and giving up halfway.  I rested my hand on your cold, grey slate as I looked outside the cemetery.

I needed to do this, one more time with you, before I returned to my life. I forced myself to think of some better time: I wasn’t going to leave remembering the moment I found out you were dead; when I drove to your house and sat outside for two hours before I went inside to find out how it had happened and let my heart drop through my rib-cage. I wouldn’t turn my mind towards your red-eyed gaze and the stench you carried from sleepless nights, how you hurt me by not paying attention when I told you about my day or how others hurt me by not understanding why I needed you and how cold your lips would feel on the rare occasions that we kissed.

No, I wasn’t going to think about it. Instead, I though about the first summer we spent together, when the beams bounced off you eyes and curved round your smile. The centuries spent under branches, looking at the light twinkling through the willow-tree leaves while we lay intertwined, clasping hands and listening to the sound of children’s voices that provided a constant noise but didn’t intrude on our private glass jar. How we would lie there and not need to say anything with each other, but listen to our hearts beat—listen to them drum the same rhythm— feel the softness of each other’s hands as our fingers stroked every crevasse, and you’d turn and kiss me on the top of my head.

I was at the cemetery gate but I turned and looked back. It was a two hour drive here, you were in your family lot, and it was slowly getting dark. I thought about how yew trees sent out their roots into cemeteries and broke through coffins so that they fed on the people inside, and wondered if any of the trees sitting on the edges used to be you: the silver birch, leaning over and crack, or the pale, tall one standing at the back, casting its shadow over me.

“I’ll come again soon. Next week,” I told it.