playing: Giant Drag - You’re Full Of Shit (Check Out My Sweet Riffs)

Another member leaves, and the circus of friends shrinks that much further (or rather, spreads thinner around the world). Maybe this is a drastic change, maybe it isn’t.

Like everyone who left, we shared a last good moment. In Ameet’s case it was a bumpy ride on a full tank through pitch-black secret forests, hills, Chinese graveyards, and a long talk about love over coffee. And Mel, we had ice-cream, bargain-hunted around the flea market on a sweet Sunday evening, and also a long talk about love over coffee.

But as for him & I, our last good moment wasn’t shared together. It was handed to me hesitantly when we paused our racing game to read my favourite children’s book. Our moment was in a late-night letter. Two years old. Oh how I could have used it back then, I was thinking as I read it later. But I realised he probably knew that too, and wisely decided to hold it back for when we didn’t need it anymore. So that we’d save ourselves from mistakes, and love what we have now more than we would’ve.

My favourite moment with him was a year ago when we were waiting in front of Farah’s house for her to come out to play. While waiting we ended up flat on our backs in the middle of the road, which the sun made like a hotplate to warm our backs as we talked about the clouds it was hiding behind. We admired the rays cutting through the thick clouds like highways cutting through forest. Those were what I called “god-clouds,” I told him. You could look at them for a good twenty minutes, the super-gold lined clouds and sun-arms, and hear a choir of women holding a high note.

I also remember us dissecting snails with sticks when I was eight years old. And our parallel qualities, including ’shit for memory brains’ and our sour lemon faces. But yeah, I love that the best of all our moments are probably the ones tied to the paper I had in my hand. I didn’t get to see him off or say goodbye. But like all my other friends have proven, the circus never leaves for good.