Jessai Flores

It’s my fault we haven’t spoken like we used to. I still remember those early days, where we’d wake up two hours before our first class just to get breakfast together. The days were warmer then, when we both clung to each other like the last leaves left on the autumn trees you used to be so fascinated with. I try to pinpoint why things changed, what set us adrift, and I think it began with your sailor hat. 

We’d planned your first Halloween in college together with scattered photos of Jean Paul Gaultier cologne ads, sailor hats on Amazon and an idea I’d texted you about too many times. I knew it’d be your first time venturing out into the night. Nights out had almost mutated into mundanity for me: the writhing mass of strangers, the leering faces of drunken men, the groping hands that’d slither around your waist like a serpent in the garden. I’d numbed myself to it years before, built up a strong, thick barrier of scar tissue and callus. All those dangers and fears split open again when we sailed into that black night.

I kept my eyes on you every second. My dancing was stuttered and stilted, broken by my darting glances at you. I felt like my mother. She’d told me how nervous she’d been, bringing me to the park for the first time, so nervous I’d trip and fall and scar up my unblemished skin. I never understood that — the fear of being bruised — outside of how I picked through fruit at the farmers market. My little brother always seemed too tough to be bruised, too tough for me to think he needed to be swaddled in cloth and carried with care. I’d thought that for him, my watchful eye was more of a burden than a shield. In high school, I thought I was a bad influence, a rotten apple that couldn’t be put alongside someone so fresh and new — someone not overripe with puberty and the bad decisions of teenagehood. I had to hold myself away at arm’s length. I’d never been afraid someone would get hurt if I wasn’t there — not until I saw you in your sailor’s suit. 

I regretted bringing you into the cold dark night with me. I could see the whirlwind of horrible things that could happen at any given moment spinning around you like debris in the tornado surrounding Dorothy. You were something precious, unbruised, unmarred and not at all like me. I was rotten for bringing you here, rotten for letting you trod down the road to hell I’d worn into the dust. I’d been the serpent in the garden, coiling around your ankles and convincing you to eat the forbidden fruit. I wanted to vomit.

Maybe it’s my fault, for seeing you like that: a piece of ripe fruit, a Precious Moments porcelain figurine that could shatter under my touch, a fragile object that couldn’t make decisions for itself. I set you adrift from me, untied your ship from the docks while you slept, and pushed you from the harbor. 

I’m sorry. I hate that I hurt you, that I made that decision for you. I tend to do that, to think I know best, to do what I think you’d want to do if you understood me, if you knew what came with being at my side. I’m self centered and hasty and pragmatic in what I think is altruism. Maybe you’re better off, maybe I was right to sever you from me before you got bruised, or maybe I cut too quick and too deep. Maybe.

Love,

Julian