This Is How You Will Remember Me

You will remember the quiet nights. The smoke in the air that enveloped us in the bar where I met you on that first night, timid and nerve-stricken. The way I pressed myself unto my seat. The vibrating melodies coming from the jukebox sitting on my right. $1.00 for 2 songs, it read. You will remember the hesitance in my voice when you asked me about myself, fearing that if I shared too much, I’ll be ardently in love with you by the end of the night. The different shadows enclosing us as if we were the only two people in the bar and everything else, disappearing.

You will remember walking me to my car, crouching in front of the window on the other side. The way my mouth always reached for yours. The way my fingers combed your hair in your driveway on the side of your house. The moonlight and the stars hovering above us like night-lights. Your breath like smoke rings in your backyard and our bodies, intertwined.

You will remember laughing and how I used humor as a defense mechanism whenever I caught myself feeling too much. The passive gestures we both used whenever we wanted to initiate something but couldn’t. The movie that played on repeat in your room the first time we finally did. You will remember the big tree. The night that turned us both into melodramatic romantics, even though we claimed otherwise.

You will think of poetry and wonder if I ever wrote about you.

You will think of curly hair and timid eyes. Wary like a fearful animal you are too scared to approach. Punk rock and crowd-surfing on a Wednesday and the first time I spent the night. The light from the window in the morning and the glare on your sheets and me, asleep.

You will remember adventure. The way I always talked about wanting to escape. Sometimes, you will remember the sadness in my eyes whenever I brought it up. The way they often wandered and stared off into space. You will remember melancholy and think of the world with me in it as both ambiguously sporadic and empty. You will think of passion and of drowning, realizing that I was both.

You will remember drinking and how I was always two or three ahead of you. All the hidden truth in all the strange things that I said, thinking that sarcasm is the only thing that can shield my twisted frame of mind and turn it into jokes. You will remember the parked car on the side of the street and our bodies drenched in sweat.
Our nights were all booze and foggy windows. Our nights were all secondhand fumes and rambling. Our nights were all scattered hazy fractions of the time we actually spent together.

It will be hard to remember them sometimes.

You will remember me like this. As a fleeting recollection of something too fitful to keep. As a temperamental ocean of sad you eventually drowned in. As the ghost of a person you almost knew, but didn’t. As a flame that grew so quickly, you had to put it out.