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“Why do my hands have this letter, mom?”
Tay is three when he notices the faint lines painting an ‘M’ on his hand like mild strokes on canvas. She jokes that they’re a ‘W’ because that’s the easiest thing she can come up with when her son lightly runs the pad of his finger over them with every bit of curiosity his body holds, sketching every stripe with the delicacy of the wind, almost afraid that it will disappear if he presses on them a little too hard.
Her name is Wasana so she tells him she loves him too much that she wants him to have a piece of herself on his hand.
It is also then, when Tay is three, that he first feels the fear of losing something so close to him.
He asks her the next time if it could mean something else and his mom tells him that it could mean whatever he wants it to be. “Right now it could be wings. You will fly high with your wondrous wings,” is what she says when she draws angel wings on his back. Tay doesn’t understand what she means, but something about the way her lips form a small smile like the promise of a new morning tells Tay it’s a good thing.
It’s when she jabs a finger at his side and it makes him laugh that he decides he wants to fly, so he does days later when he jumps from the third flight of their home’s stairs. He earns himself an ankle sprain, and a hybrid of worry and relief disguised as scolding. His mom asks him in the middle of gentle pushes of cold compress what he was thinking, so Tay answers her truthfully that he wanted to try out his wings, says he wants to know what color and how big they are.
His mom doesn’t say it when she considers that Tay might not think like other kids. He’s smart and she thinks that maybe his curiosity would cause him more pain in the future than just a sprain could offer.
Tay doesn’t think he’s smart even when his teacher gives him a star and tells him he is, but he learns at a young age that he craves wisdom so he asks again sometime between twilight and dusk, when he watches a flock of birds fly over his head, why he can’t see his wings. His mom smiles and tells him there are some things we can’t see but are there—in the creases of our shirts or in the spaces between our fingers or on the valley of our backs—always, undeniably.
And Tay thinks they’re similar in a way—the wings on his back and the letter on his palm—forever a part of him.
It’s a year later when Tay first feels a storm hit him, its strong currents blowing away every ounce of strength his wings have and stabbing a huge hole right through it when his mom gets involved in a car crash. Tay doesn’t understand a lot of things, doesn’t even know what name to call the emotion that leaves a heavy weight in his chest, but he does know that it hurts. He knows it was sudden. He knows nobody was prepared for it. Not him, not his siblings, not even his father who has learned to understand a lot of things.
It is when Tay is four, a year after he first feared about losing something close to him, that he learns the hard way how it actually feels. But like the wings on his back and the letter on his palm, his mom will always be a part of him, maybe even more than he is a part of his own.
Tay wants to know, wants to understand what happened but spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall but Tay still doesn’t.
His father learned to understand a lot of things, even this, so he helps him understand too. He tells him that sometimes people leave even if they don’t want to, that they would stay if they can, that it would hurt but it would heal.
Tay thinks he already understands but fall turns to winter and winter turns to spring and it still hurts.
—
Tay first meets New when all ten of his tiny fingers are still enough to count their ages combined. He tells New he is five by showing his right hand, palm held out just inches from New’s face. He’s too focused on the teeth sticking out from New’s mouth as he smiles at Tay so he doesn’t see the way New’s eyes trace the lines of his skin forming an ‘M’.
It’s when New wraps his even smaller fist around Tay’s thumb to show him that he is four that Tay learns that people go, but they could also come.
That’s how New manages to come hurling into Tay’s life—brazen and unmindful. And Tay welcomes him like how you would the beginning of a new year, with arms and heart wide open, bared for everyone to see.
Tay didn’t know that at the age of five, someone as bright and breathtaking as New could make him scared, because at that age, Tay has yet to find out that brazen and unmindful could refer to hurricanes too.
—
It’s in school, when Tay could no longer count his and New’s ages combined with the fingers of both of his hands that Tay realizes he wants to write. He pretty much still wants to fly, but now he wants to write about how it feels like before, during, and after his wings take flight.
He is twelve and New is eleven when he decides he wants to write, and the first thing he writes about is his friendship with New.
He gathers a black sheet of paper specifically and a pen, a white one because it’s New’s favorite color. Tay finds out when Mrs. Techaapaikhun bakes cupcakes and asks them both which colors they want for the icing. He chooses blue and New decides on white. Tay asks his best friend why and he tells him that it’s his favorite. Tay asks him again why because he is nosy like that, and New answers that it’s because he loves the white shirt Tay gave him for his 8th birthday; because vanilla ice cream is white and he loves that he gets to eat one with Tay on Fridays after school; because he thinks white matches well with blue like how he matches well with Tay.
He tells the blank sheet in front of him of stories about anything and everything Tay and New he could think of.
He allows his hand to speak in muted words, ones only he could hear; tells about how much he likes that New would give him the last piece of strawberry his dad prepares for them whenever New comes over; how New snuggles close to him like a kitten even when New tells him he’s a puppy because they always argue; and that dogs and cats should hate each other but they don’t because “you’re my best friend, Te”; about how much he hates the fact that New doesn’t call him phi or Tay; hates that he actually doesn’t hate it because New calls him Te and he gets the privilege of being the only one to call him Hin.
He writes a thousand other things about his friendship with New that it feels a little too intimate to let anyone see, even New, so he folds the paper and keeps it safe between the pages of his favorite book.
Tay has a sharp memory but he forgets what his mom once told him that there are things that exist but we can’t see. So when Tay sets aside what he’s written, he doesn’t realize that he’s keeping something else. He doesn’t realize that something’s already brewing inside his chest that he doesn’t want New to know.
But it’s there—faint and quiet, but only growing stronger and louder by the second like a volcano waiting to erupt.
—
It’s in university when Tay’s and New’s fingers on each of their hands could no longer count their ages combined that they start to drift apart; slowly, then all at once.
Tay decides on Mahidol while New decides on Chulalongkorn. Tay thinks that it’s okay, because wherever New goes, he will always be Tay’s best friend.
He tells himself it’s okay, because he still talks to New whenever they both can. He tells New about the way the sunlight penetrates through the blinds of his apartment so he probably should get a new one. Tay tells him about the old woman who’s always reading the same book in the library he frequents. Tay tells him that he talked to her one day and she told him it’s all she reads now because it was her husband’s favorite. Tay tells him he wishes he went to Mahidol too because he misses New.
New has always been good with people, a far contrast from Tay whose fingers are more than enough to count the number of people he is close to. So New tells him about the parties he gets invited to. New tells him about his new friend who really likes photography. New tells him he really likes the ice cream parlor a few blocks from his university. New tells him so many things except that he misses Tay too.
And that’s okay because he still gets to talk to New and no matter how many people New meets, he will always be Tay’s best friend.
Tay pretty much still wants to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and it’s when New visits him for the first time after months of separation that he figures he likes New too. But New also figures he doesn’t like white anymore.
Because it’s when Tay is 21 and New is 20 that New decides he likes red.
New tells him in his apartment, where he still keeps his blinds even if sunlight penetrates through it, that red is for the pair of lips that tells New she loves him, for the roses New gives her when he asks her to be his girlfriend, for the color that paints her face when she answers yes.
It’s also then when Tay thinks his bed is too small to fit both of them because he expects New to stay the night and feel him snuggle against him like a cat again. Tay doesn’t see it but red is also for the ink that he uses when he writes about his broken heart later that night after New leaves.
It’s between the lines of she’s jealous and it’s no big deal, right? that Tay stops calling his best friend Hin and New stops calling him Te because his girlfriend doesn’t like it.
And Tay thinks that’s okay, but that’s when he feels for the second time how it’s like to lose something close to him.
New barely talks to him now but everytime he does, he calls him phi. It sounds so foreign coming from New that Tay double checks the caller id just to make sure it’s New he’s talking to.
Tay doesn’t tell him about the crack on his ceiling from when it rained too hard. Tay doesn’t tell him that he’s starting to develop a passion for photography. Tay doesn’t tell him that Khaotang found a new friend. Tay still wishes he had gone to Chula instead and thinks that maybe then he wouldn’t have to cry alone in his room because he misses New when New doesn’t.
—
Tay is 22 when he meets Joss. It’s been 21 days, like the number of fingers Tay would need to count New’s age now, since New last talked to Tay.
Tay still pretty much likes to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and somewhere between unanswered phone calls and eyes that stay awake with Tay through most of his sleepless nights, Tay grows to like Joss too.
He no longer gets to talk to New and he thinks that’s still okay because whatever happens, New will always be his best friend.
It’s also when Tay is 22 that he starts to date Joss. He doesn’t tell New because he’s already used to not telling New things.
And New thinks that’s not okay.
—
Somewhere between Joss touching his body and Joss telling him he’s trembling, Tay apologizes and breaks up with him because he knows he can never love him the way he loves his best friend.
Tay cries because Joss is too nice when he tells him he knows and it’s okay.
—
When Tay is 23, he goes to a bar with his friends, and it’s when he sees the same brown eyes that used to look at him like he’s the most beautiful person in the world does he remember that it’s the day New turns 22.
New doesn’t see him and he thinks it’s better like that. But he watches New, his eyes trained on him even when he blinks away the weight of the alcohol.
He thinks he’s drunk too much but he knows he’s still in the right headspace to identify how clear his feelings are for him.
It’s the day after New turns 22 that Tay passes by a café and sees New sipping on a cup of coffee instead of beer. This time, he’s already looking at Tay and it makes Tay feel like something inside of him comes alive.
Tay thinks that if New can come into his life all brazen and unmindful, then he can walk up to him the same way. So he paces inside the café and sits across New.
That’s when he musters up the courage to ask New what went wrong and New tells him it’s all his fault. Tay tells him not all. New tells him he’s sorry and Tay does the same.
New finally, finally says he misses Tay, and Tay thinks it’s all going to be okay. Because no matter where they go or how many people they meet or how many heartaches they make each other feel, New will always be Tay’s best friend. Somewhere between sleepovers and vanilla ice cream dates, New starts calling him Te and he starts calling him Hin again. And that’s how Tay knows everything’s going to be okay.
—
It’s one stormy night in April when the engine of his car gets busted that he and New decide they want to dance in the rain.
Everyone looks at them weird but he doesn’t care because today he has New and New will always have him, and that’s all that matters. The way he’s running with New’s hand in his got his knees shaking and breath hitching, but what knocks the wind out of his lungs is when New stops him in his tracks and New tells him he loves him. That he always has.
It was one night in April when Tay is 27 and New is 26, the rest of world forgotten because tonight it’s just the two of them in their own little one, that he tells New he loves him too and New tells him he loves him again.
—
Tay’s not the same four-year-old boy who first felt how it’s like to lose someone close to him. He now knows what name to call the emotion that leaves a heavy weight in his chest, and this time it hurts a lot more.
He now understands why people have to leave and he remembers his father telling him that it would hurt, but Tay thinks he’s never going to heal.
Because it’s when Tay is 30 and New is 29 that New stops aging and Tay stops counting because he doesn’t want to remember a world where the fingers of his hands could no longer touch New.
—
Tay is 35. He pretty much still likes to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and he tells himself that he really, really loves New. So he writes about him again. He doesn’t keep track of how many books he’s written for and about him, but he knows that he will always be a part of his works.
He writes about how he realized he could never grow real wings but it’s okay because New makes him feel like flying, and somewhere out there, Tay knows New has his own wings now.
He writes a thousand things about New and it feels too intimate to let anyone see, but this time he doesn’t keep it between the pages of his favorite book. He keeps it next to New because he wants New to know everything has always been about him.
To my best friend and the love of my life,
Someone once told me that there are things we can’t see but are there—like in the creases of my shirts where your scent stays and serves as a reminder that you love to sleep in my clothes more than your own, or in the spaces between my fingers where yours fit right in, or on the valley of my back where your lips kiss the outlines of my wings, or in my heart where you are and will be—always, undeniably.
I’ll find you again in our next lifetime. Wait for me.
Always yours,
Te