Love On The Wires

You and I were practically joined at the hip. For every joke I heard, you laughed at the same point I did. Our humor was like honey poured into a biscuit, where each half reopened to show a mirror shape. You and I fit, we stuck together, we clicked.

It didn't matter that your parents spoke their language at home and mine spoke another.  We had our own lexicon of words and gestures. We communicated in our tribe of two. We each had different friends and went to different schools, but we never were really apart - at the end of class or back from shopping, we would hunt down the other. A new treat or show and tell would be shared. Life was a discovery and we ventured together.

Opportunities never offer you what you think you will get. It acts like a wedge, hard and fast, splitting up a whole into parts. You stayed on island and I left to study. Work made our lives different. 

I molded closer to my culture and you gravitated towards yours, and from our movements poured a poison that withered our togetherness. I know so much less of you, and now you think of me as an imposter. I speak one more language and insult and injury arise as you realize I never mastered yours. You have an accent I didn't hear before. Did we choose to forget our own micro-culture? 

Our social circles widened. We never had time to run into each other. We got older, those sweet jokes changed and we outgrew our cavities. Did our teeth get stronger or did we just learn to brush more often? I can't say I loved you, and it was never physical. It wasn't mental, fragmental, kinetic or anything alike. We were good friends and now we aren't.

There was a time I could call you and pour my heart into your waiting hands. You didn't judge me because you were well versed in my culture. What we talked about might have seemed alien to me but they were part of your belief system and if that was part of you, it truly was good enough for me. I cherished those differences - it made our friendship mysterious.

Suddenly there were no more calls and no more back and forth. It wasn't gradual. It was like falling asleep and finding yourself swimming in a pool and naked - it was one of those cold, awkward dreams. 

I see you in passing and you are busy in your life and I am distracted in mine. There was a time we could sit in a companionable silence and be together in our separate worlds of thoughts; our shadows touched and that was enough. Now we pass each other in the fog, we try not to collide to stay happy.

We have drifted apart like continents on a tectonic journey. We grind away on our little missions and campaigns. There are no more shared practical jokes. The games we played are boxed and put away on dusty shelves. I am entirely to blame and you are 100% at fault.

I miss us. When was the last time you made that funny face at me behind someone's back and I burped up into my nose? The sting has now morphed into a dull ache. Those days are gone. I remember your favorite ice-cream. Can you still remember mine?

I have a throbbing ache in my chest. Our friendship was the connectedness of telephone lines, now turned to barbed wire. This will be my crown of thorns: the day I realized I no longer had the friend I always thought I did.