My Friend, The Places, and Myself

I keep thinking about this. a deep, returning feeling of longing for my friend Abdalwahab. I keep imagining a scene where we are together again, in the same town where we first met, walking the same streets. I miss him more than I know how to say. he is a missing essential piece, and what I feel when I sit with his absence with this imagination of going back to the places, is something close to grief, for the years we have had to live apart, growing apart in different directions, in different places, while still carrying each other somewhere we don’t talk about enough.

Growing up, life was not very beautiful. but we made it colorful. there is a memory at every corner we ever met at. every street, every tree we lay under, every place my feet have touched in that town, he is somewhere in all of it. and I don’t feel I want to go back there alone. I can’t. the place without him isn’t the place I’m missing. what I’m missing is a world that only existed when we were both inside it.

I want to go there with him. I want to cry at every corner. I want to find every place we used to be and stand in it together and feel the weight of all the years we weren’t there. I want that more than I want most things I think about wanting. my heart only wants that.

And for some reason, a reason I’m only beginning to understand, I keep wanting three things at once. my friend back. the places back. myself back.