Twelve Feet Deep

It was never as simple as running into someone in the grocery store. There were no colliding shopping carts, no spilled apples rolling down aisle five as we exchanged hypothetical apologies. We didn’t trip over our own feet and catch ourselves on each other just before laughing it off and growing speechless when we locked eyes and swapped coy smiles. It wasn’t a meet-cute trope fit for a romantic comedy starring Hollywood’s latest heartthrobs, and we never won our Oscars in the end.

(I’m still waiting for mine, but no one ever gives you the recognition for being an actor in your own life.)

We moved in a blur and ended up nowhere. None of it was conventional or picturesque. It was never worthy of having its story told until shoveling it all into lyrics broadcast to the world ceased to act as immediate gratification for my woeful mind.

It’s only when the lights fade out and we all go home each night that I remember how I found myself personified in another form that summer. It’s when I’m lying awake, spying on pedestrians from hotel rooms that I realize just how much of an effect she truly had on me despite how brief our time was together.

It’s funny how a particular phrase will haunt you at all the right moments. It’ll appear after years of absence and greet you like an old friend, asking all of the usual questions: Hey, buddy, how’ve you been? What'cha been up to these days? It never goes away.

There’s comfort in the bottom of a swimming pool; those were the first words she ever spoke to me.

I blinked a couple of times, trying to figure out if I’d even seen her mouth move. I remember thinking that maybe she was just a skilled ventriloquist. Did that make me the dummy? I probably would’ve sat there on that tiled slope, pondering that thought all night if it hadn’t been for what she did next—but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

My memory always backfires on me. It’s selective in the way it forgets instances and makes certain recollections stand out more than others. Ask me what my first day of high school was like, and I won’t be able to recall past the bus ride there. I can’t evoke the feeling of nervous joy during my first kiss or the opening of my acceptance letter into college or my twenty-third birthday, but I remember everything about that summer.

And maybe the worst curse of all is that I was never able to forget.