We had this bulletin board with candid photographs that our teachers used to take of us

I guess to commemorate the school year when it got to its end.

There are only two pictures of you

You do not ****** yourself in limelight.

They are strictly taken without your knowledge

The first is one with you working in a group project

Carefully fixing a model of some sort

Quietly working with others

Agreeable, patient, very careful

I was going to take this one, but I came across another.

This one is charmingly black and white

With you alone-sketching something –again probably for a classroom assignment

The only thing I wish of this picture is that you were sketching what you wanted

That it was you, how I remembered it

Putting a heart, a light, a dedication, a sweat, and a story

Something that danced before my eyes

Something that would materialize and be, just be in its own creation and life

I would remember in this your pencil strokes and the way you would look up and kind of smirk at me

And I would wonder if I was hidden away from you while you drew, or if my presence irritated you in some way. I would self consciously observe- not sure to speak, not sure to keep silent. I favored silence.

This picture, your face in it: concentration. A loving concentration, zoned out that you possibly couldn’t see the lucky individual with the camera. I make out the shape of your eyes and a side profile of your face and I wonder, I wonder what is this peace, patience, loneliness, vast adoration that I feel that I deny myself over and over again.

I know this picture is old and it makes me smile still- its what I missed

It reminds me of a song you let me hear

About not being home, my weird sensation of being truly ****** up

And how sweet you were about the whole thing

So on one of the last days of school, when it is excruciatingly possible to never see you, never truly see you again.

I went into the box of pictures and stole away this picture of you when no one was looking

I didn’t want it cheapened by questions

I didn’t have answers, but I had reasons

I imagined it sitting on my desk

A guy, any guy comes over

“Who’s that?”

I would smile and blush and not have an answer

I would only know and not have an answer

There was something careful about you, I guess that reigned me in.

I can’t tell you how badly I needed a friend who understood on that level, how badly I needed you in some strange quiet way

I didn’t want to struggle with a knowledge that could hurt you

“You know the bottom line was
I couldn't change your mind
Honey, could I?”  

Confuse you, anger you

I can’t, I can’t

And I can lie and say I don’t know why but I can’t

So selfishly I tried to keep it in simplicity and it only grew more complex

And so now you have given back to you meaning in a picture

The closest thing to a sketch I could, for you to see what’s inside of me

And with a lasting strangeness, like a scar

I miss you.