The idea of this.

The idea of this is that you see me in the same way. It’s that we walk together, and when one of us says, “Man, that smells like…” the other one says, “Bread,” and we nod in an agreement on nouns but also on how we’ll spend the Tuesday three Tuesdays from now together.

The idea of this is not to talk about it too much because language can be like water sometimes—diluting the importance out of everything until it tastes like everything else. And you told me, that night in the car wash, you told me that I tasted like nothing else, and that is also the idea of this: to taste like nothing else.

The idea of this is more than what we think, but we decided—a handful of Fridays ago—to not think about it so much, so today, I’m thinking about things that simplify my moods when I think of you: what did the air taste like when you first held it this morning, at what time during the day did you remember that you have fingers, how many times did you swallow before you remembered I am an important part of your schedule too. Simple things, because the idea of this has always been simplicity.

The idea of this is to always feel like I am floating on a current that feels nothing like water. My arms are spread wide, and the buoyancy is in the words that you put together when you ask me about the last song I listened to, if I’ve written my 1,000 words for the day, did I put my fingers in my mouth afterwards in the way that you like me to. The idea of this is me coming apart like book bindings, it’s you finding your story in my chest, it’s both of us on a Wednesday trying to figure out how we ever made it through the week before we found each other. I look at you and tell you how happy I am, and you look at me and tell me that it’s okay if I wanna fall asleep because I look sleepy, and I tell you something that I would’ve never told you had I held all of my coherence in that moment, and you nod and smile and tell me that you already know, that you’ll check on it before Tuesday.

So now it’s another Tuesday and we still haven’t decided how we’re gonna end it together, but I smell something and let out an exaggerated sniff — and there goes that part of my brain that takes consequences and turns them into words again.

“Do you smell that?”

There goes the part that wants to make an instrument out of every piece of your body.

“Got an idea what it is?” you ask me.

And you threaten the border of each reason I gave myself to not make much of an idea of this.

I tell you that my idea is that it’s bread—like it was last Tuesday—and that we should go see what else the restaurant serves.

You tell me that you think it’s pie—adjacent to bread, but harder to experience if you don’t trust the person who made it—and that you want something saltier, something that can hold you through a thing or two.

I hold you through a thing of my hands, through two of my fingers, and I am grateful that the idea of us has always been this. That it has always been finding the scent on a sidewalk and turning it into something that makes us decide what we can trust as the idea of us.