— Tales from the Universe
I once knew someone for about five minutes.
Not literally five minutes.
The universe was a little more generous than that.
But five minutes is about the size of the time it took for us to realize that we had already known each other somewhere that clocks don’t measure.
We were both loud.
This is important.
Some people need quiet to feel comfortable.
We needed somewhere away from everyone else so we could be loud without having to compete with the room.
So we would wander off.
Find some little corner.
And talk.
Really talk.
The kind of talking where you don’t have to keep checking whether the other person is still there.
They are.
You’re there.
That’s enough.
There are people who become your friends because you slowly learn their history.
You meet their family.
You learn their habits.
You collect years of memories.
And then there are people who somehow skip all of that.
They arrive.
Something clicks.
And suddenly you’re speaking at a depth that usually takes years to reach.
I don’t know what causes that.
Maybe some people simply have compatible frequencies.
Maybe souls recognize each other.
Maybe two loud idiots occasionally discover that they have found somewhere safe to put all that volume.
The universe has never clarified the mechanism.
It probably should.
I remember thinking that my friend was not necessarily the kind of person the world would stop and admire at first glance.
I was.
At least, I knew how to carry myself.
There are certain kinds of beauty that people recognize immediately.
Other kinds require conversation.
Presence.
Attention.
A willingness to look twice.
I was fortunate enough to look twice.
And there he was.
My brother from another mother.
We each held the other’s presence well.
That’s the phrase I keep coming back to.
Held.
Not tolerated.
Not endured.
Not performed.
Held.
There is a particular comfort in finding someone who doesn’t require you to become smaller.
You can arrive at full volume.
They don’t flinch.
They answer at full volume.
And somehow the room becomes quieter.
Not because either of you has stopped making noise.
Because neither of you has to.
Then the wheel turned.
And turned.
And turned some more.
That’s what wheels do.
They don’t ask whether you were finished with the last revolution.
They simply keep going.
War.
Status.
Money.
Death.
The enormous machinery of being alive.
People are carried into places they never intended to go.
Sometimes they disappear from your life so gradually that you don’t realize you’re watching them recede.
A boat moves away from the dock.
Not dramatically.
Just a little.
Then a little more.
I think that’s what happened to us.
Our boats were never very far apart.
But they were tethered to different docks.
Mine drifted one direction.
His drifted another.
Every once in a while, I could still see him.
Then the distance grew.
The size of him in the distance became a measure of time.
That is a strange way to watch someone disappear.
Not all at once.
Just becoming smaller.
Still there.
Still recognizable.
Just farther away.
There are things I wish I had done differently.
I wish I had been there more.
I wish I had found a way to cross the distance.
I wish I had known which moments were the last moments before they became memories.
But people rarely know that.
That’s one of the universe’s less considerate design choices.
It doesn’t put little labels on important moments.
THIS IS THE LAST TIME.
PAY ATTENTION.
YOU WILL MISS THIS.
Instead, it lets an ordinary afternoon be an ordinary afternoon.
Then one day you realize you haven’t seen someone in a very long time.
And the wheel has turned again.
I don’t know what became of every conversation we might have had.
Maybe they simply vanished.
Maybe they became something else.
Maybe a piece of him ended up in me.
Maybe a piece of me ended up in him.
Maybe that’s what friendship actually is.
Two people leaving traces on each other without keeping receipts.
A phrase you start using.
A way of seeing something.
A joke nobody else would understand.
A memory that arrives unexpectedly.
A certain kind of laughter.
A feeling of having once been completely understood by someone.
These things don’t look like much.
But they persist.
Sometimes I wonder about the river.
The one I imagine waiting somewhere beyond this life.
Maybe he’s there.
Maybe he’s sitting on the bank.
Maybe he’s already chosen another boat.
Maybe he’s resting.
Maybe he’s laughing at the whole ridiculous arrangement.
Maybe he’s telling somebody about this strange man he once knew who was apparently incapable of being quiet.
I hope so.
I hope he remembers the good parts.
Not because I need him to.
But because I like the thought of the memory having somewhere to go.
And if the universe is as strange as I suspect it is, perhaps nothing is ever entirely lost.
Perhaps our lives are less like lines and more like currents.
You drift into someone else’s current.
For a while, the two of you travel together.
Maybe you make each other laugh.
Maybe you help each other stay afloat.
Maybe you simply sit beside one another and make the water feel less empty.
Then the currents separate.
You keep going.
They keep going.
The meeting is over.
But the water remembers.
So I won’t pretend I understand what happened.
I won’t turn him into a lesson.
I won’t make his life tidy just because I am telling a story about it.
Some people deserve to remain partly mysterious.
Some friendships are too real to summarize.
Some losses are too strange to explain.
And some people leave a shape in your life that remains long after you can no longer reach them.
That’s enough.
More than enough.
If anyone was going to become fancy dust, though—
it would be him.
I can picture it.
A little shimmer catching the light somewhere unexpected.
On the sleeve of a stranger.
On a windowsill.
Floating over the river.
Some tiny piece of impossible glitter that makes somebody stop and look twice.
They won’t know where it came from.
They won’t know whose life it once touched.
They won’t know that somewhere, a loud man once wandered away from a crowd with another loud man because five minutes together somehow felt like enough time to call someone a brother.
And maybe that’s exactly how it should be.
No monument.
No explanation.
Just a little sparkle.
A little residue.
A little proof that two boats were once close enough to hear each other laughing.
Then the wheel turns.
And the river carries us on.
But for those five minutes—
or whatever strange measurement the universe uses—
we were there.
Together.
And I am glad I knew you.
Brother.
Wherever your boat is now.
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