Find Me

by André Aciman

“Love is easy,” I said. “It’s the courage to love and to trust that matters, and not all of us have both. But what you may not know is that you taught me far more than I’ve taught you! These vigils, for instance, are perhaps nothing more than my desire to tread in your footsteps, to share with you anything and everything and be in your life as I always want you to be in mine. I’ve taught you how to earmark moments where time stops, but these moments mean very little unless they’re echoed in someone you love. Otherwise they stay in you and either fester all through your life or, if you’re lucky—and very few are—you’re able to pass them on in something called art, in your case music. But above all it was always your courage I envied, how you trusted your love for music and later your love for Oliver.”