Kaleidoscopes

We are getting married, and you are invited!

Tamara Eloise Murphy & Frederic Webster

27^th May 2024

Please RSVP by December 1^st. 

Dear Henry,

I’d love for you to be there :)

Tammy 

Dear Tamara, 

We haven’t talked for a long time, and I admit, I was surprised when I found your invitation in the mail this morning. I honestly didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again after what happened at the five-year reunion last summer. You were angry with me the morning after, I could tell because you didn’t stay for breakfast, and the bed was empty when I woke up. It was the second time in my life that you had abandoned me like that, the memory like an echo of hurt and heartbreak that suddenly came over me again when I realized that you had simply walked out, without hesitation, to go back to him. And to marry him, it seems. I was hoping you wouldn’t run right back, that you would take that night as a reminder to rethink the choice you had made, but apparently I was wrong. 

It's late as I am writing this, I spent all day thinking about you while pretending to go about my usual day as if nothing had changed: work meetings and phone calls, grocery shopping, the drive home, speaking to my sister on the phone while having the TV on in the background. I kept thinking about the invitation, about what to say and what to feel, and now that I’m sitting here with a bottle of wine, it feels like I’m talking with you. I can almost see you sitting across from me, your eyes so blue that I lose myself in them, and you are quiet like you’re waiting for me to finally speak my mind. That is why you sent me the invitation, isn’t it? Some part of you, deep down, wants me to convince you that this is a bad idea. I know you, Tammy. 

It feels like the memories are overlapping when I think of you like this, becoming irretrievably intertwined with each other until I can only see one version of you, kaleidoscopic but still perfectly clear. There are the memories of you as the seventeen-year-old I first fell in love with, your hair is bright pink and wavy, your voice is beautiful when you sing, you smell like ocean and lemongrass, and your skin is soft and feels sacred when I touch it. We are laying on the couch in your mom’s house, and the fabric presses against my bare back when you lay on top of me while we’re watching Friends on TV. I run my hands through your hair, and we whisper even though there is nobody around that could overhear us, but it feels like we are each other’s secret, like the bond we share is so rare that it has to be protected from the world. You whisper, “I love you,” and I say it back, and we kiss, and you are like a magnet pulling me in. My mom says it’s just my teenage hormones and that we have to make sure we use protection, and I laugh when I tell you about it because she doesn’t understand how deeply I’ve fallen for you, and how light the world is when we carry it together. We still use protection because it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t tell any of my friends on the volleyball team that we went camping that late May weekend, no locker room talk, because giving away our secret would feel like betrayal. And yes, I felt betrayed when you didn’t tell me you got accepted to Toronto and that you were moving away after graduation. And yes, I betrayed you, too, when I didn’t want to try long distance, and I hated seeing you cry on the last day of high school, because all I ever wanted for you is to be happy. But, Tammy, seeing you with him, seeing your life unfold in a series of Facebook posts like a fairytale for the world to see, that was the betrayal I couldn’t forgive. How easily you moved on. How effortlessly you became someone else’s girlfriend, someone else’s best friend, someone else’s person to whisper to. 

And then there are the memories of last summer, how you walked into the room and greeted all our old friends that stood there in a circle like you had never left. How you came over to me, and your voice still sounded the same, and the scent of ocean and lemongrass was overwhelming when you hugged me. How we talked, and you told me about university, and about Frederic, and every word felt like a punch in the stomach because you seemed so happy, like I had always wanted you to. I realized then that I didn’t want you to be happy if it wasn’t with me. But were you happy, Tammy? I like to believe that nothing would have happened between us if you had truly been happy with him.

Kissing you was a déjà-vu, you tasted like youth and secrets and summer and recklessness. I took you home with me like a thief in the night, like I had stolen you away, a real secret this time. I should have kept you forever that time, but you were gone the next morning. It felt like waking up from a dream, but your scent lingered in my apartment, and I could still trace your electric touch on my skin. I don’t know why I believed that night changed anything for you. Maybe because it did for me, because for a moment I thought we could go back to who we were when we were seventeen. But you didn’t hesitate, you didn’t even seem to consider the possibility of us being ourselves again, together. I don’t know what I was to you that night, maybe a distraction, maybe an experiment, maybe a souvenir. But to me, you were everything. 

So no, I will not come to your wedding, Tamara. I can’t watch you make this mistake when I know you so well, when I know what we were and what we could be again, and I’m trying to help you understand it, too, trying to arrange the memories of us to a kaleidoscope through which you can see clearly.

Write me back. I’m yours, Tammy. 

Henry