Time

You always said that time went too fast. That things should just slow down. That everything was just far to fast-paced for you to handle. I wondered if time functioned differently for you, whether days, hours and seconds just moved in a different pattern than for the rest of us.

That summer you made me switch rooms with you, From east to west, west to east. You said you couldn't stand how early the sun rose, that it was just a reminder of wasted days.

I loved waking up in the early morning, seeing the sun's first rays creep lazily through the slats in your wooden blinds. I had made you promise that I could keep them on your windows, you wouldn't need them in my room. So you slept westward, always waiting until the sun had set before entering your room, so you could forget the passing of days.

I never told you that I could sing. You found out one evening in March. I was home alone, or at least I thought I was, and was washing the dishes, carried away with some old gospel hymn. You must have stood there for an age, taking it all in, because when I turned around and found you, your shoes were off, and you were entranced.

I remember you berating me for months about never singing before then. I told you I did sing, just not around people. From that night on, you'd always try and catch me out again. For a while it turned into a game for us, I'd start up a few notes and you'd come bolting into the room, where I'd pretend I never sung, and you that you had never tried to catch me out.

We sat out on the grass in front of our house the evening that it was too hot to be inside. Our days were full of iced drinks, lazy fans and old jazz records. I was playing your guitar and you would sing softly when our drowsy conversation lulled. Those were the happiest times, you said. The times when you could just forget about time. You believed that time moved slowest then, and you thrived on those evenings.

I remember we spent way too much time together. You can tell when you start to tell each other about what you ate that day, even recalling the ratio of pistachios peeled to eaten, just for the fun of it. Even when we went on holidays without the other, we would end up sending pictures of our meals to each others phones, just because we were so used to sharing everything.

It wasn't until years later that I realised I was happiest in those times. I began to see how time moved and danced for you, and began to miss it in the years after, as one misses an old friend. I guess I try to find parts of you in the friends that I have now, but nothing really measures up. One person just can't be another, as much as you can sometimes wish. Now I guess I hold the most of you in my character, in the nuances and idiosyncrasies that I picked up around you. I see more of myself now in the people surrounding me, I suppose in a weak attempt to create, in reverse, the friendship I had with you.