In photographs it was always only a fragment or two of your lover. I knew his name and the corner of his eye, his back sometimes, and rarely his sleeping face obscured by where the shadows fell. He was the only mystery in your albums — the rest I understood. The rest was a testament to a place we had both been. We had a golden childhood spent trapping sunshine into the folds of our skin at our elbows and knees. Maybe we were spoiled with one too many warm afternoon naps, but somehow we left our hearts sleeping under printed blankets in little girls’ beds — you on your side of the world, and I on mine.

I never fell in love so I could not understand why you would let some boy with a fiery torch go roaming through the corridors of your youth to find the one room where your heart was locked up. He was setting everything on fire, and I was there terrified in the cellar wondering if he would burn me to cinders. So I never ventured up the stairs to look at him or ask what he was there for, and you rewarded my hovering curiosity by simply never letting me learn the whole truth of him.

You turned the pictures of pieces of him into a puzzle for me, or I let it become a puzzle without your intention. I can no longer tell the difference because waiting for the next excerpt of his essence to develop in your albums takes up all of my time. Perhaps even the time that was meant to be used on feeling things instead of trying to understand them without any experience to tie them to.