Loved One

by Aisha Muharrar

Traffic was constantly gobbling up our lives, so everyone was late to arrive and in a hurry to leave.

It was like finding out someone else was fluent in a language you thought you had invented.

But it turned out I had organized my own religion, one that relied on what I now saw as the seemingly romantic, but ultimately cruel, philosophy that Everything Happens For A Reason. Without this private logic, I was vulnerable; it was a crisis of faith.

“Now I have to do that thing where I pretend to leave. But I’m just waiting around, getting a drink of water and listening to your applause, letting it feed my ego until I become a real boy.” The crowd laughed. He waved to the audience as he headed backstage. They continued clapping. Once he was behind the curtain, he pointed at me and winked. Bwahayhay.

Oh he was funny

The more was the friendship. The more was knowing we would have each other even as the people we dated passed through our lives. We were lucky the way we were. In other words, it would have been perfect if it snowed that night. But it didn’t and it was perfect anyway.

Sometimes when someone is feeling awful about themselves, you have to let them get it all out and not intervene, otherwise it becomes a screaming match between you and that awful voice in their head. No one ever wins against that voice.

I didn’t have to pick up. He disappeared and then texted me the equivalent of a generic mailing-list blast? No way.

It was tiring, having to show him how to have an adult relationship. He could be such a baby.

Dem