The whole of the moon

 

“Why are your legs shaking?” she asked.

 

“I’m cold,” I replied. 

 

It was late in the evening, a clear night with a bright moon casting jagged shadows across the small courtyard at a mutual friend’s house where we sat facing each other, our legs entwined.

 

We were both 17, and had grown close, recognising in each other a kindred spirit and a mutual desire to escape from the straight-jacketed dogma and conformity of the Pentecostal school we unwillingly attended.

 

The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album played quietly on a boombox as we sat, content in each other’s company, smoking Dunhills and talking about the future. What would happen when we left school in a few months? What would our lives look like once we were finally liberated?

 

It wasn’t a boyfriend / girlfriend thing. We’d never held hands, let alone kissed. And the idea of sex? That just seemed like an alien concept. Our relationship wasn’t like that. I needed her and, I guess, she needed me. Together, we knew we would survive.

 

But inside me, I realise all these years later, there was an unrequited longing. I wanted more. She had an on again / off again relationship with a classmate, a guy who had been my best friend in primary school but whom I’d drawn away from in later years. It wasn’t something I got. Her and I understood each other, and I wondered what she saw in him. 

 

What I couldn’t say to her was that I wasn’t cold. That’s not the reason my legs were shaking. Those shakes were the buried emotion I had for her, emotion induced by our proximity and intimacy on that moonlit night all those years ago. 

 

I guess it was, in some way, love. Teenage love, the product of an innocent realisation that someone sees you. That they know you. 

 

This is for you, Narni. Thank you for still being in my life all these decades later. Thank you for saving me and seeing me for who I really was. I would not have made it without you.