Graveyard Grems
We met in a graveyard in 2017.
That’s not quite right. We cemented our budding friendship while running a 5k in a graveyard. Your beautiful brother was dead and my mom was actively dying and that felt like a solid foundation. I was manic with distraction. We volunteered together on the committee for our queer community center’s annual event, and I knew of you the way that queer people in small towns know about each other: from across the room at parties, profiles on social media, from some friend of an ex or ex of a friend.
You knew about rugby and when I threw myself into it, you threw yourself back in. There were muddy, raucous games, the thrill of smashing bodies into bodies and emptying brains of anything but impact into the pitch. Back ten, with you.
We spent less than a year in the same city but we road-tripped to nowhere cities in the south for tournaments, made vodka cocktails in the ditch when someone’s car broke down on the highway. It was imperative that we look at the stars that night.
And we drank, and drank, and drank. We saw dolphins and you got seasick on that boat. We slept on the floor in a bedroom meant for two, packed with seven of the rugby team, bodies giggling and falling out of bed to land on our backs. We woke up to see the beach sunrise because it was beautiful and I asked you to. Everything still and touched by rosy light. We bought a cake for your rugby big and you calmed my anxiety at seeing my shitty ex at the party, laughed when it turned out she was your shitty ex, too.
When Mom died you were there. You were there when the world went quiet and the fog came in and I don’t remember much of the rest of that year.
I hyped your dreams of moving back to Chicago and mourned hard when you left.
Four months later, I moved to Atlanta.
We met for a weekend shortly after in a different city to hot tub in a cabin, watch trash tv, and get matching tattoos.
We did that back-and-forth between Atlanta and Chicago for five years, kept a two-year pause for COVID, collected another matching tattoo: “Toad sat and did nothing. Frog sat with him.”
We messaged every day, a litany against abandonment. “Good morning” and “What’s your day like?” transfigured: “This humble structure will shelter your spirit and care for it like my own.”
Call it abyssal love, a rapidly expanding galaxy of tenderness and security compounding into a certainty that you’ll always be in my life. Two trash gremlins snacking side by side forever.
It’s intimacy like walking through a downpour to buy me a coke for my migraine, like endless charcuterie boards and perfectly executed crafts together in silence. It’s your humor and deep insight, pep talks and holding space, floating cash when we can. It’s sending each other tiny delights and treats: stationery, stickers, thoughtful packages back and forth.
It’s friendship farther than family. Doesn’t hurt. Holds you steady.