Flaw Salad

I remember things about you I shouldn’t. I remember the way you held my head in your hands the first time you said, “I love you.” We were in my car outside that park, the same one I wandered through as we spoke on the phone the second time. It wasn’t the first, I know, because that happened the morning after. I was driving, and my stomach ached. You told me stories of the previous night, of our first encounter, which my mind had erased.

Last night I visited our bar. I still think of it as ours, even though you bring her there now and I brought someone else. It was where we began and where we ended, slowly over painful months. I remember the night we sat on the curb. I cried and cried, and you wrapped your arm around me—the arm whose comfort I needed and rejected and craved—and you told me you were proud of me. I sneaked you into an office building, and we leaned against the bare basement wall. You kissed my face and held my hands. You said I was strong.

You loved me in a way I never deserved, and I loved you sporadically, in gushing bursts followed by drought.

We sat in a coffee shop one day and worked beside each other. You smiled over your screen, content. Proud. You achieved a climactic milestone that afternoon and opened me in a way only one other had before. You saw me surrender control. I think of that moment often, of our parking garage and the back seat of your van. I think how brazen and foolish we were and how I wish I could go back.

Do you remember the night we brought out our spouses? It was Christmas, and we both sang duets in our happy couples. We barely made eye contact, but our connection was thick and palpable. We reveled in our depravity as we flaunted our fake marital bliss.

I still listen to the songs you sent me and the ones I sent to you. I remember the first mix. I listened in my kitchen, in a sunny, cool breeze as I prepared to rake the yard. I jumped into a pile of leaves later and smiled at the autumn sky. Precious melodies floated through me, and you lived inside each of them.

But nothing was better than the pebble beach. We stayed for hours, watching the river run past us. We talked and kissed and basked and never wanted to leave. We ate a burger in town, and we climbed a cliff. If anyone asked me which day I would live in forever if I could, I would tell them that day. I keep the tiny heart you gave me as a reminder, and as I turn it over in my fingers, I remember us.

When I see you now, you are a stranger. We smile our, “How are you?”s, and we continue our separate ways. Your skin was once as important as my own, but I no longer know you. You are a body with a private life, like every other body in the room. And I shouldn’t remember you like I do.