Member-only story
Goodbye, love.
A platonic ghost story.
It’s been a year exactly, now, and so it is time to address or process or recognize that the best friend I lost on a cobblestone street in the Barcelona Gothic District, outside a bar with a tiny happy puppy and no patrons, save us, is gone forever and done and so here, I tell a ghost story, my least favorite type.
A year ago I asked her, “can we talk?” “What happened?” “What did I do?” And a year ago she asked for “time to process,” and a year has passed and I’m wondering, “now?” “Is it enough?” “Can we talk?” and now my words float like whispers on a haunted wind, unnoticed. I never wanted to be a ghost.
I didn’t so much meet her as stalk her, from a distance, as she was the first bisexual girl in my peer group and, from a distance, I watched her wield that power over boys and girls alike. Her piercings, lining her ears, and goth-phase chokers and black denim were a giant adolescent “fuck you” to our preppy highschool and, so, I was not surprised when she transferred out of my orbit and out of reach, across town to the “rougher” highschool where she felt she’d fit in. My crush, then, Austin, was heartbroken at his loss of his crush, then, her. And so I was allowed him briefly in her absence. It’s impossible to be found, after all, when her glow is a spotlight leaving everyone else dull and shadowed. Then. Now. She had always…
