Dearest Alero,

My very own. I received your letter this morning regarding a writing assignment to demonstrate my appreciation for you. My first thought was, Why? We live together. We are one. So why?

Why?

Knowing you as I do, I realized you need something tangible to hold on to, even if they are lies. But I won’t lie to you. Every word I will write will be accurate. Very honest. I know you more than you know yourself, Alero; this includes the things you tell me and the things you don’t. I KNOW YOU LIKE I AM YOU.

Below is a perfect example.

About one month ago, you met this brilliant guy you didn’t think much of at first. And it was because you didn’t know anything beyond ‘interesting’ of him; because you did not foresee that one day, you’d begin to think about him in more ways than you thought about life, you let your words run ceaselessly like a broken water pipe the first time you both met. It was a casual first meeting, after all. You would hate it later: the act of thinking about someone in a way unlike how you have trained yourself to be. It may have had something to do with the fact that you did not want to be penetrable and that no matter how openly he spoke and how permeable he may have seemed, he wasn’t. That, you would later conclude, was another part of your weird similarities.

You were older.

For many, that would have been the end of any burning desires. But you were not ‘many.’ You were you, and for you, it was the beginning of a passion. This desire didn’t spring from the thought that he was young and appeared vulnerable. He was not vulnerable. It was borne out of something that resembled denial. The more you denied that there was no point, the more it became apparent that there was a point.

You knew he admired you in a way he thought fit. But that admiration wasn’t love. You could swear it wasn’t, even if he never said so, even if he looked at you sometimes as though he did. What you felt for him wasn’t love either. You knew because the very first time you felt something like love, it didn’t feel this way. It didn’t make you feel weak and strong at the same time. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t admiration. It was a feeling that had no name, but you knew it wasn’t love.

The second time you met, it was a planned accident. You hated it, and you didn’t even know why. It was not like the first time you met him; you prepared for it. You didn’t give a heck. But it was under control. It was casual. This planned accident would make your feet walk faster than they usually did; you’d begin to babble at some point and apologize for no reason. And he would play cool. At this point, that which you felt for him was still vague and untouched. It was still nothing.

The third time you met, it wasn’t a planned accident. It was a real one—the most unexpected of all. I remember you said you stuttered. You were sweaty and tired. You just wanted to get home because it was dark and your legs hurt. And there he was, sneaking up behind you, calling your name. I don’t remember you telling me that he hugged you or you hugged him, but you were excited to see him. He would nudge at your shoulders with his shoulder as you both sat in the semi-darkness. His fingers would curl around your fingers as he later walked you down to your destination. He would advise you to sleep; he’d pretend he cared. These, you realized much later, meant nothing at all. They stopped meaning anything the moment he told you the truth, and how the entwining of fingers and locking of eyes were just a mechanism he devised to give you the wrong impression about his reality.

He intimidated you in the way he spoke. You did not hide that fact. Sometimes, you wondered if it was the different realities you grew up in or the different career paths you were pursuing, or perhaps he was too much for you: his intelligence, his sense, his maturity. You did not like this at all. But you did not see him as a competitor. Instead, you resolved to learn. Another thing that shocked you. It meant you liked him more than necessary.

The fourth time you met, you wanted him to have the world. You tried to give him an experience of something – a lifetime, give him first times with things he may not have imagined himself doing. But it rained that morning, and as you lay all dressed up in your bed thinking, it occurred to you that maybe you weren’t meant to do all those things. This thought was confirmed when you met almost two hours later than intended.
It was the most extended conversation you both had. It was the most educational and somewhat intimate. You were quiet most of the time. You liked his shirt, but you didn’t tell him. You didn’t tell him you enjoyed his hair too, or his eyes or his smile, or his choice of friends. Those things did not seem to matter then.

You’d share a lot with him. But not so much to give you away; to strip you bare because you weren’t sure he’d understand. For instance, you didn’t think he would appreciate your insecurities if you told him. You didn’t know he’d understand the intensity of those things that have driven you to attempt suicide three times. You let him know his friend was your ex-crush, but you wouldn’t tell him that you kissed this friend more than once because he wouldn’t understand. Because it may scare him. For some reason, he struck you as pious, but even that was funny because he was not. You didn’t let him know you liked him, or you thought he was handsome and that his accent did something to you. You didn’t tell him you loved the way he pronounced your name or the way he looked at you. God! You loved it! You told him a few times, though, that you liked a game he loved. The difference was that he could play, and you couldn’t. And he didn’t look like a good teacher.

Most importantly, you wanted him to know you weren’t crushing on him. Crushing was just a game. You never date those you crush on. You never date. But he aroused feelings that had ceased to exist within you.

There’d be a lot of body contact this time, hands mostly. You held hands, fingers touching while smiles were directly exchanged. It was such a simple thing that was wrapped up in something more profound. He’d ask, ‘What would you do if I kissed you right now?’ This came when you had only just begun to talk after a long time of listening. It threw you off balance and rendered you speechless for some minutes. When you recovered, you felt he had meant what he said. Your head would tell your feelings later that it didn’t mean a hoot. He had just wanted you to keep quiet. He had just wanted to observe how you’d react. But the sound of what he said and how he said it never left you. Even now, you feel it.

The last time you met, it was over something very trivial and unimportant. And that was the ridiculous thing about that one final meeting. It was supposed to be ordinary, but it blew your mind. It blew your fucking mind. You realized he noticed details about you that people wouldn’t ordinarily see. He smiled lavishly. The eye contacts were more prolonged, more profound, and lingering. The body contact, although light, felt great. He wrapped his hands around your shoulders several times in public. It gave you a sense of importance, but you’d later realize it was only an illusion. You met his friends. You liked them, knew what they were capable of, and knew how much their presence in his life would determine. You had liked one of them before, after all. You called it crashing. It was a disastrous situation.

Then the urge started.

You wanted to kiss him.

It felt like a sudden possession.

You didn’t want to leave until it happened.

But you were so unsure. You were not scared. You hardly got frightened. But you were unsure.

You wanted to hold his face in your hands and stare at his smile.

You wanted him to understand you in totality because you knew he didn’t.

You wanted him.

After that last meeting, after fantasizing that night about impossibilities, after engaging in all those things you knew he’d like and even telling him about them, you’d wake up two mornings later and tell yourself the coldest of all hard truths: There Was No Point. No fucking point.

So, no more.

No more, you said. You meant it.

You had come a long way protecting so much, preventing so much. You’d be a fool to let everything you had become, everything you had covered, come crashing down just because you were silly and excited.

He did not love you. You did not love him.

Love was just a name, but you knew what you felt for him would wreck you; destroy you to pieces. You never doubted your instincts. Better end now, or never.

And…

You were experienced enough to know nothing lasted forever.

One of you was going to die, going to leave.

If there was no other reason, that was enough reason for you.

Now, you are healing, deleting memories, forgetting, resetting. And I know you Alero. I know you well enough to know you always achieve what you set your mind to.

So Alero, like I wrote earlier, I know you better than anybody else. I know you as though you live in my body.

Hold me accountable for all I have written. Swear I have lied somewhere.

Let my words be used against me in a court of law.

‘Wild hearts can’t be broken’.

Dear Alero,

With love,
ME.