just kids

I am not a visual thinker. I think squarely in words and cadence, never in pictures. When we were 15 and learning about the human body, a friend sat with me after school, patiently teaching me to draw the eyeball, the heart, our reproductive systems. I was failing bio and she was the only one who cared. 

Each day, we would practise: a squiggly line here, fuzzy ovals there, an impossibly narrow triangle in the centre of it all. The heart, I remember, was the most complicated one with its valves and atria and blood flow in opposite directions. In one way, out the other. I couldn't understand how our insides could be represented with just lines on a page. Thump thump thump goes the heart. Arrow in, arrow out.

This is what I remember of growing up. When we weren't talking in class, we were passing notes, writing letters, sneaking looks across the room. We felt extra special, and therefore, constantly misunderstood. Once, in the middle of a thunderstorm, we ran unsheltered all the way to the bus-stop outside. I dropped my math textbook in a puddle on the road, and for two years after the pages dried wavy and crinkly, with bits of leaves speckled into the spine. Once, when we were exiting school, a bird shat on my shoulder. I screamed until S emptied her water bottle on me. It's supposed to be good luck when a bird does that, she said over and over while I forced my blouse as far away as possible from my body.

There were always break-ups and make-ups and third-wheels. For almost a whole year, F's girlfriend made her a bottle of homemade honey water every morning. Till today, I associate honey water with unadulterated devotion. I spent an enormous amount of time on the phone. Listen to this song I just learned to play, N would say, and because I had a crush on her I would, even though S always told me N only had a vocal range of 5 notes. Later, when my crush blew over, F sat me down and asked as gently as she could: what were you thinking? 

When I think of myself through teenage years, I remember the feeling of heartbreak the most. I can taste it in my mouth: the wet of disappointment, bitter drunk, shame too dense to swallow. But the bad is dredged in good too, like the wild joys of being young and reckless, of having friends you love who love you back. You christen one another with ridiculous nicknames, make mixtapes and handmade presents that you keep for years in a box under your bed. On Valentine’s Day, everyone says from dawn to dusk: never forget — I love you. 

I think now of all these years past — too many memories compressed into words and lines and letters long forgotten. The heart thumping away in a chain of hands that have cradled me more gingerly than I ever did. Arrow in, arrow out. Love coursing through each little vein.