I saw your best friend on the street- we were both walking home from work and I was just thinking, god I can’t believe I’m getting home so early, it isn’t even 8 yet when I saw him and waved to him and he said, this is the first time i’m leaving work at a decent hour in weeks and i said, me too! and we said how are you and how is work and we said it as sincerely as we could and we nodded, oh we nodded so much it was silly and there was a van parallel parking and honking and a man yelling but we didn’t move out of the way we just kept asking how work was and saying, Great, oh that’s great and I wondered how much he knew, wondered if he thought you were crazy or I was and I wanted to stop and yell, to cry to him but instead we are proud and we lie to each other and we nod so much and it seems so funny that we ignored your very existence, even though when I met him you were all we talked about— we held hands all day long and he stood with us and talked to me while I trailed along, hungover and in shock and scared and wondering what you were thinking but he tried and it was touching and terrifying and I worried he would hate me and I felt 12 years old and second guessed everything I said and wished you would just pretend I didn’t exist, the way we did to you tonight.
You don’t exist anymore and his company got funded but you won’t move here like you told me you would and his face looks very kind, he is the kind of person I could get drunk with and tell everything I’m afraid of to and he would nod sternly and offer little back but I would trust he understood. I’d tell him I’m afraid you don’t exist and I’m afraid I know I’m a fool and I’m afraid everyone hates me behind my back and you- what if everyone lets me down like you did?
Do you remember the woman on the street, the day we walked down this street that I stood on tonight with him, and how she had that baby that kept craning its head to look at us, how he almost flopped out of his little baby blanket as he reached for us- we were holding hands and beaming and terrified and the mom said, What are you looking at? Why are you looking at them? What do they have that you want?” I’ll never forget that sentence, it shot through me just the way your words always did, late at night, filled with good intentions- and she said it again and I was silent but beaming and our hands were sweating but we didn’t let go, we didn’t ever let go, I loved you through that hand all day, it was all I could do was hope you knew how much I loved you that way. And the mom turned around finally and said- Oh, they are smiling! They are happy, that’s why you are looking at them!
All of New York and I can’t stop running into your friends on sidewalks. What a joke.
