In China he is eating dinner in a restaurant that the Zagat Guide picked out for him, and I am here arranging shirts in his closet. Beijing is a light map glowing underneath the glass of the many screens I have seen it on. He sends a picture of the view from his hotel room every night. He likes to joke that the buildings are multiplying and asks me to track the sprouting skyline until he comes home.

I have never had the right mind for sorting things by colour or texture, so this is just an excuse to feel familiar fabric between my fingers — to feel it enough to convince myself that it is the skin underneath and not the cotton. This is what it’s like when he is a dot on another continent, like the black circles that mark capital cities in atlases, and I am the page number in the corner, counting the days till his return.

I dig receipts out of his shirt pockets and keep the ones that were printed when we were together: coke bottles from the convenience store on a Sunday two months ago, his mother’s favourite novel bought impulsively (and the wrapping paper that went along with it) in May, and band-aids from almost a year ago when I cut my ankle walking home barefoot after dancing in the park behind his high school.

Tomorrow, I will ask him if he remembers.

But tomorrow is now a word with its meaning stretched twelve hours apart, with him pulling on one end as I tug on the other — like sharing a blanket in the winter. And that is the thought that keeps him close like the body I know is there on the other side of the bed even when we do not touch.

His voice is like butter melting in a pan over the stove. It pours over a room like hot oil lacing a honeycomb, and you want to stand under it like you stand under a cold shower on a hot day. He falls over you like a good rhythm, drilled into your scalp and shoulder blades like heavy rain. And every time he speaks, he’s drawing you a golden bath. You can see your face in the bathtub shining back at you and the light is warm. Listen for a moment and he’ll have you dipped in the colour of leaves before they turn red. Then he’ll set you out to dry into a bronze figurine for the top of his bookshelf only to talk you into a puddle again.

Some people buy easy-chairs, Jack, but all I’ve got is you. I’m ringing the doorbell at your apartment again in every dream I have after midnight. I haven’t been sleeping at all, but I have been dreaming of you. You look good in the moonlight.

I don’t live in the house by the lake anymore. I think you are cross with me about moving to a well-lit street where you cannot pin your shadow to mine. I’ll have someone stitch them together like in Peter Pan, and then you can haunt my step forever.

Are you spending your summer in Neverland? I cannot tell from the postcard. You burned the first side black and left the other blank.

The boy who sings happy birthday at your party is never the one who stays till all the balloons are breathless and crawling along the floor. He is never the one you’re in love with, and always the one you wish you had — had like a string of pearls in a box on the shelf in your closet.

The person who waits to watch the city lights relinquish their glow to the sun rising outside your window is exactly who you expect. An old friend, a cemented lover, someone you cannot shake. He bows his head to another year of you.

But you wanted a raised glass like the one in the hands of your birthday singer. It’s someone different every year, and exciting only because of his newness. He fills the night with possibility because he has no pages that he has worn out with you. He tells only unheard stories and has never seen you wear the same outfit twice.

Passing entertainment seems always better than satisfaction amidst birthday candles. The cake is iced evenly from one side to the next, so the chaos has to be in the cutting. The years will play out on repeat from one end to the next, so the chaos has to be in the interruptions — like the chiming of cutlery against drinking glasses when you are mid-sentence just before he sings you happy birthday.

the trumpets exploded
gold flames in her eyes
and a blaring pulse to match

he said, “Sunday
Sunday, we’ll go swimming
part the summer with our fins
rip valleys in stretches
of blue sky”

and the dazzle drew
her close, drew
the yes from her mouth
into the fold
and under
his shirt collar

he was all invitations
and silver linings
woven onto his coat
in buttons and bells

whistled the soloist
a shiny tune
like the sparkle in her eye
as if dusted clean
aired out after years of darkness

he promised bottle-rocket pace:
“we’ll snatch the speed
from youth itself
and the red from rubies
to paint the town”

the drums shook
a tremor in her voice
but she whispered yes

and the orchestra went silent

packed up and put away
for Sunday

You are at ease only when the sun has set — relieved that the daylight no longer obliges you to match the way it shines. You are no diamond after all. Now you’ve got yourself dialed up all the way to self-destruct sitting in the library. I’m certain they’ve got books on suicide and you need only ask the woman at the front desk where they keep them. But why trouble her with the decision of calling the psychiatric floor at the hospital. You learned the Dewey Decimal system for a reason.

You don’t like to drink anything other than water. The world of chai lattes and gin and tonics does not know how to introduce itself to you. How do you say hello to anybody without asking them what they’re drinking. You would have it figured out if you thought about it enough, but your head is filled with questions that nobody is asking:

What are the names of the Portuguese immigrants who built the CN Towerr?

Where does the light come from in all of the Vermeer paintings?

Who decides which artwork goes on the postage stamps?

You hold onto poles in subway compartments not because you can’t balance but because you like to forget about your hands and how they are not doing anything. Your father’s are carrying a briefcase and your lover’s are holding yours, so what does that leave for you? You keep pebbles in all your coat pockets because you haven’t been able to answer that question.

They make the announcement over the speaker system that they’re closing the doors. They remind you that you can sign your books out self-serve style now that people behind desks are growing obsolete. No need to slide your library card over the counter any longer, and no woman behind it telling you that you are too young to read Kafka at 13 as a result. Some ambitious girl you’ve got to look at when you turn your head over your shoulder. Yet here she is wearing size 7 shoes and not even able to name enough things she knows without a doubt to match that number.

There you are, suddenly. Like always. Standing under the canopy of some store window as though the pavement dreamed you up. I wish I had a say in your coming and going, Jack.

It’s your job to count all of the things that make my chest burn. You take it seriously. You hold your hands up and catalogue everything that has made my skin turn red as though the list-making will change things. You take me seriously because I admit to you all of the things that I do not want to admit to myself.

I’m sorry for locking you up that one time in that black room with no windows. I do not want anyone else to see you sometimes. I want to keep you all to myself always. It’s fair for you to punish me by being sporadic.

The gate is going to slide shut again without my say and you’ll disappear behind it. Swallowed by some invisible hole in the sidewalk. I wonder if this interrupts you or if you keep marking off all my demons on your fingertips even on the other side.

In an alleyway where the darkness is velvety, I am your cigarette holder. Not the cigarette. I don’t have the privilege of being the bad habit you can’t pass up. I am just the silver sliver that holds up what you really crave. It’s cold for a spring evening and bright, too — bright enough for the moonlight to make your cigarette holder shine like noise in an otherwise perfectly black photograph. You can see the glimmer from the sidewalk where the smoke is rising from the grates, but who would look at that when there’s the burning glow to catch their eyes instead?

You’re looking at the moment where a dream comes true. You thought it would be fireworks. You thought it would be the sound of champagne bottles popping open. You don’t even drink. Not even on Saturdays.

She’s wanted this forever. She’s your best friend, and somehow you can’t even pick her apart from every other robed scholar on stage. Her mother has asked you to snap the picture for her when she goes up to collect her degree. And here you are now, cradling an old point and shoot.

You took a year off. You convinced your parents it was for the better. “I want to be a writer,” you say to everyone who asks you how you pay your rent. It’s the same thing you said to your parents four years ago, and that’s your problem. You can always say what you want to be, but never what you are.

You try to take her picture when she shakes hands with the dean and every shot comes out blurry. Her mother doesn’t care. She thanks you and pulls you close into a hug, and you can’t help but feel like a surrogate daughter until the real one is available. You know this is an ugly thought about a woman who has never wished you anything but the best.

“What’s it feel like Miss B.A.?”
“Now you can sign all your e-mails with a bunch of extra letters at the end of your name.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“You even look smarter!”

And many other things like that. You think of all of them, but you don’t know what to say. You’re not quite jealous, but you’re having a hard time being happy for someone you love. You don’t know what to call that. She hugs her family. She hugs you. Will you come to the party later? She wants to know. You tell her to have a good time. You don’t tell her it’s because her friends never fail to ask you what your major is.

Her parents say they’ll give you a ride home, and she sits in the backseat with you like you’re twelve years old, being picked up from the library or a birthday party. She leans her head on your shoulder and closes her eyes as if she intends to catch up on all the sleep she has missed pulling all-nighters of both kinds.

“I can’t wait to read all about this,” she says.

You laugh and assure her, “It’ll be on my little unvisited corner of the internet soon enough. The blurry pictures might deflate the tone a bit.”

She yawns, “I don’t mean that. I mean in your memoir. All great writers eventually get asked to write one, and I know I’ll be in yours.”

You wonder for a moment if she can say things like that so easily from a place of safety because she’s already achieved everything she wants. And then you snap yourself out of it. You know it is much more than what you can ask of the world to have someone who loves you enough to believe in the things that you sometimes cannot believe in for yourself.