E is for Eli

Pt. 4 "My God" (אֵלִי), "High", or "Ascended"

I don’t truly know what a prayer is. Four years as a dedicated baptist, and the act of succumbing to my knees still feels pointlessly hedonistic; like a bark in the night while everyone is sound asleep.

If I had more to say to you, perhaps there would be more to this. I’ve always felt an irony about it, loving you the most and yet, having an inability to properly express it.

When I was little, though, there was this pull. Similar to the strum of a guitar or the concentric circles left by weight falling through water;

It was an ache or a begging, either word will do

but it erupted with the scream I let out from the womb. Revisiting Earth is always terrible, never mind when you’re alone.

At the knock of my soul came your existence - just three years ahead. Only 1,302 miles from the start. In a breath, you became the answer to everything. Your premonition, like a paper weight on my desk. I no longer fear life the way I once did. And

No, I can’t put words to it — this knowingness. Knowing you. Having known your voice and face and silhouette before ever truly seeing you.

I felt you in the summer, through my flexible adolescence and the smoke of my youth. You survived as dappled light in office spaces, in curated playlists — in hope.

On occasion, I’d lose you. Heartbreak after heartbreak, lie after illusion. Over time, the thought of you began to drift, the outline blurring like a distant coast.

But soon enough, you’d arrive back at my shores, freckled and blind. You are sleep when I cant find it, the first bend of the knee before crawling into bed.

I’ve told you this story time and time again, how the world comes to me like clothes on a line, fractured and ever moving. You are the hand that binds; the hand that stills the line so that I can experience minutes instead of seconds. Hours instead of glances.

The ominous, She isn’t well

became a, she will be

in your voice.

you’ve given me everything, merged the fictional with blood. Foreheads aligned, you’d called us soulmates before I knew the language. Thank you. Thank you.

You taught me to speak, how to move forward. My freedom never scared you. Neither did my mind.

I know now that words evade me because you knew my soul before it found its way to the plains. Between you and I, there is nothing new to say. There is no dividing line; just a consciousness exchanging bodies.

Ten years doesn’t scratch the surface of us, but we celebrate it, always. I’ve found you in every life and I will find you again and

again,

until we are trees with entangled roots. Maybe we already are; bending beneath the wind and waiting.

To my Eli, to all that is good. I love you terribly.