21 Kevin

Some mornings when I’m just rousing from sleep, I’ll feel you there. I burned that in my brain because you weren’t there in person, except for those rare vacations when you really were. I knew if I wanted I could call you any time, and I often did, and you me. Once or twice a day for years. Your deep baritone in my head.

You accepted me as polyamorous almost without question, when I was determined to live that way and not deny who I was any more. But it’s hard to say why. Often it felt like the idea that I didn’t want you all for myself was a way to keep me at arm’s length, as if you needed that even living on the opposite edge of the continent. A way to blunt my intensity. A way to protect your heart.

When I pushed you for more, you always said maybe someday, not now.

My photo box has so many you sent, labeled but full of digressions in your messy scrawl. Caving, hiking, metal detecting. You had a gift, like the time you pulled that gold nugget out of the desert when we were together, after only a few minutes looking at dusk. The perfect Clovis point when we weren’t together, right out of the sand off Annapolis exploring a wreck, centuries and millennia apart, just a fun afternoon for you.

You knew just where to look, in the roots of old trees, the walls of old houses, places you learned people hid things they valued.

When I had someone new sleeping next to me every night, I bristled at the arm’s length, and you were even worse at persistence than I am, so we stopped talking. No anger, just absence.

I said I wasn’t going to write about you, that I didn’t want to write about something sad again. That we couldn’t make it last a long time. That you left forever without ever telling me you were sick, let alone goodbye.

But I woke up this morning thinking of you.