Compass

You come to me at night – just as tall and valiant as ever. It’s been a while now… It’s been a while, old friend, but you look just like the day I last saw you, carrying a leather bag, looking offly grown up in your navy green suit trousers.

I remember how the light flickered on your face as we shared a drink over a blinking tealight in a secluded corner of your favourite ruin pub. It felt like a private moment – a very quiet ‘Until next time’ in some ways. We both knew we’d not be seeing each other for a very long time again and yet it felt nothing like a goodbye.

How could we ever truly let each other go, ever? You’ve been part of my superego longer than I care to admit and I’ve become one of your primal drives – an island in a deep, dark, dead sea where life still exists in one form or another. Where things still happen – really happen and not just repeat past forms like the cheapest of Baudrillardian simulacra -, and quite possibly even more importantly where you could still experience love. Caring and being cared for. It astounded me how hard you found it in your daily life yet how natural it seemed between the two of us.

We fit into each other’s lives and psyche seamlessly – it’s almost disturbing how boundaries melt in between, how nothing (nothing!) seems to really matter when it comes to letting each other back in. I think it’s because I was 15 when I first met you. I think it’s because you were 17.

In some very odd way it feels like we’ve grown up together, shackled to each other’s roche, orbiting each other silently like darks stars in the night. Sometimes closer, sometimes really rather far apart, until my fingertips traced the edges of your slick buzz cut again and your arms locked around me under the electric neons of yet another summer night. It never really ended well on the long run – and yet in some ways it always did. You always wanted your essence to be made into art and I wanted nothing more than to immortalise you.

To keep you safe, healthy, and stable. Alive.

And yet it was a harder task than I ever imagined. A lot harder than I was prepared or equipped to handle.

Slowly you slipped away and in some ways so have I. You’ve become a thing of 2AM texts from numbers I don’t recognise, and I’ve become a thing of Christmas cards that arrive empty and read nothing at all.

And yet every once in a while you still come to me at night. You blow powder on my face, powder from your palms, and the white dust settles on my eyelashes. Thanatos is your name and the night stands still around you. It feels a little bit like dying every time you ask me to stay.

JBV