Ezra

The first boy I ever kissed had tattoos on his hands. When he leaned in to touch his lips to mine, his hand rested on my back and I remember thinking about the ink seeping through my clothes and resting on my own bare skin. His mouth tasted like beer and, in the midst of my infatuation, I found it charming. For the rest of the night, we spent it using our mouths, either to speak or kiss. 

He showed me how to blow cigarette smoke in a perfect circle and I taught him how to say 'I love you' in foreign languages and as I watched the vocalization of true love roll off his tongue like candy, like they meant nothing, I felt a surge of joy that this was the boy I was sitting with on a pale September night. After the playlist started to repeat itself - as much as I may like 'Just Like Heaven', I don't need to listen to it three times in one night - I told him I was going to leave and after receiving a flurry of kisses and slurred words of 'I loved meeting you' and 'Let's do this again sometime', I walked out the door. 

Three short weeks later, I heard the news, or better yet, overheard it, since I was walking to class when I heard a group of girls talking about it. He was dead. I stopped moving, perplexed. I skipped my Religion class that afternoon and sat on the swings of an empty playground, drowning in my thoughts, unsure of what to do. Was I meant to go to the funeral? Should I wear black? Would his close friends notice me and wonder who I was?

I sat by myself until the sun hid behind the hills. Eventually, I did go to the funeral and I stood back, feeling out of place and lost. After the mourners started to peel away to their cars, speaking in hushed tones,  I came closer. Looking down at the numerous wreath of flowers covering the grave, I thought about his face, his laughter, his eyes, and how all of the things that made him were gone. 

I thought about the tattoos on his hands and wished that that night, they had actually jumped onto my skin so that I'd always have a secret part of him with me. I was interrupted by a hand on my shoulder, presumably belonging to his father (they had the same eyes.) 

"Did you know him very well?" he asked, his voice kind and heavy with sorrow. 

I looked up, blinking a few tears away. "I wish I had." I really wish I had. 

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Just something I wrote recently.