“Whom do you love best, enigmatical man?” -Baudelaire


What I liked most was not the holding-on, but the letting-go. There were beautiful things, always. One could always recall a night warm and strange with the sense of being whole of ourselves, the sense that these lives are infinite the way water is infinite, rushing into all things with gentleness and ferocity. There were always hands and mouths and the fluttering of eyelids that only knew how to say “more,” and “more,” and “more.” Her voice would come to me in dreams, often, saying only “come closer,” saying only “stay.” Often, upon waking, I wondered why I hadn’t.

As a child, I was fond of games, the way all children are fond of games. Learning to “go” on green light and “stop” on red light taught me the foundations of intimacy, when to draw nearer, when to turn away. Hide and Seek taught me that the world will go on without you, that if you wait too long to be found, the seeker will give up seeking. Sardines taught me that others will seek you out in your darkest corners, and like cats, join you there. But mostly, I liked to see how long I could hold on.

I’d grab my sister by her hands and suddenly, we’d become swirling, spinning faster than terrible tornadoes, held together only by our will not to let go. Her braids would fly about in the air and I would say “I’m dizzy,” because I was trying to see too much, the blurring world rushing by us in a sea of greens and branches. I couldn’t see enough. “Look at me,” she instructed. And as long as I watched her eyes, bright and full of mirth, the world could make sense. The world was reduced to the bond of two beings enthralled by chaos. And as long as I watched her, the world was a place that made sense.

It made sense until it didn’t, until one of us could no longer hold on and was forced to let go, sending us both tumbling onto opposite sides of the yard. That was the joy of it, being sucked into the chaos and being spit out, like loose change, only God-knows-where. For a few moments, everything would toss and turn terribly and I’d lay in the grass, gathering my bearings, my hands in the earth and my eyes towards the sky.

What I thought of, then, was not the absence of my sister’s hands, or the way her eyes had made the world stand still. What I thought of, then, was the freedom, watching the clouds pass, eternally, the marvelous clouds.