I miss the boy who sells fruit in a place where people say no good comes out of. I miss his shorts that look like fields ripe with harvest and his ocean of a t-shirt.
I miss his little mop of wavy black hair, his green eyes that become crystals in the sunlight and deepen in its absence.
Is your name Garik? Or is it Garo? Or am I getting you mixed up with someone else? I may have forgotten the symbols for which represent you but I will never forget what made you you to me, here:
Your smile as wide as the watermelons you sell. Your heart warmer than the strong coffee your mother makes. Your scrawny legs that always made their way a little closer to me no matter what time of the day it was and your voice that crossed oceans with a melody that sang "We are here."
And we were.
We were two people-- you of pomegranates and fresh sunflower seeds and I of mangoes and mangosteens, two entirely different shades of earth, you with your snow flakes and I with my sun rays, you with your black robed monks and I with my white clothed priests, yet there we were.
Oh brave little boy, I love how different doesn’t scare you.
My slanted eyes did not seem strange you, nor did you question why my skin looks like the browned sides of baked bread compared to the floury white of your arms. You did not find it funny that I must be at least five years older than you are yet must be at least half a head shorter. It did not matter to you that the only words we had to give each other in the same tongue were “Hello!”, “How are you?”, “What is your name?”, “Where are you from?” because sometimes those words are all it takes to make your way into someone’s heart and stay.
As for mine, stay you did. Language, cultural, socio-economic barriers were nothing to you.
Instead, you simply played the boy who wanted to know the girl. And so I played the girl who responded, the girl who saw the boy's clouds of smoke in the sky spelling out "We are here.”
And we were.
And it’s been three months.
Now you are there.
And I am here.
But to you, it's the other way around. Because here is a matter of who is telling the story. Maybe we will never again be characters in the same chapter. Or maybe we will be. And maybe I am counting the pages until for us, here is right where we both are.
Aystegh. Here.
For everyone who's ever missed someone they never really knew-- whether it be that school guard who was transferred somewhere else or that cashier at a fast food restaurant who was there every time you went.
This poem is for that little boy I met in Armenia who sold fruits in front of my friend's house. He would greet me everytime I passed by him. I hope you still remember me the next time I see you.