Apricot Lip Gloss and the Howling Wind

    I am sitting at her gravestone, her name pasted in front of me. The flowers are wilting, their colors not quite as radiant as they were the days before. Maybe I should bring her flowers, and replace the old ones that her mother leaves weekly. Then again, maybe not. She never did like flowers. 

    We used to fight over her not liking flowers, a minuscule argument now, one that seems like a stupid detail to even recall, but it’s the truth. She never liked them and I couldn’t get enough of them. We were black to white, apples oranges, bisexual to lesbian, in the closet to out and proud. 

    All of our arguments, of course, could be attributed to the overarching elephant in our relationship, the thematic question we always circled back to: Was she ashamed of me? The answer, simply, was yes. She was ashamed to be bisexual and to like women in this small town, and I was a piece of herself that she hated, no matter how much she cared for me. She hated my hand in hers and the way her head fit perfectly in the nape of my neck. She hated the taste of my apricot lip gloss and the way her fingers traced over my hips. She hated seeing me in the hallways, because it would always lead to a fight: why couldn’t she just say hi to me? However, she didn’t really hate me, only what I was to her. She resented my pride in contrast to her shame. 

    When we were in private, her shame was easy to ignore. She loved me. She loved me in private and she adored the harmony that our bodies held while together. Though shame is a funny thing - it eats you from the inside out. 

    Never once did she admit of her shame for me, only her self loathing for herself and her sexuality, but was I not a reminder of her attraction to girls? To the shape of their bodies and the harmonic sounds of their voices? How she loved these things on not only a man? 

    She loved me in secret, but I was ready to scream her name to the world. 

    The gravestone in front of me is louder than I ever would have been. 

    A murmur escapes my lips, the first time I had spoken to the tomb: 

    “I would have loved you in secret forever.”

    And I would have. She hated all the reminders of my femininity and what it meant for her, but I loved the reminders of hers and who she was. Her voice was melodic, still singing phrases in my head - “I love you” over and over and over again. The taste of her lips against mine, how they moved in a rhythm together, was undeniable. The way her stomach felt underneath the touch of my finger. The way her strawberry blonde ringlet curls felt twisting in my hands. The way she looked in her favorite flowing dress, how it looked as she twirled. The way she stuck her tongue out when she was focusing and she pursed her lips when she was angry or frustrated. The way her freckles only appeared on her pale skin and pink cheeks under the light of the sun, as I had seen for the first and only time just under a year ago - last summer. The way she would cry at the happy parts of sad movies because she knew that it wasn’t over yet so the characters would be upset again. The way she would text her grandmother, the only other person in the world who knew of her bisexuality, pictures of us together, because she had no one else to share them with. I truly loved everything about my girlfriend, if only she loved herself enough to call me that. 

    Though now the sun was coming from behind the clouds, the cemetery illuminated under the natural light. I had given her until the end of this summer - four months - to stop behaving like I was a blemish. I did not need her to come out to the school or her parents or her sister, only to be okay with herself, and not seem so mortified by an accusation or the possibility of us being together. 

    I would have loved her in secret forever, if only she wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me. Me: the lesbian. Her: the popular party goer. Bisexual. 

    I got the privilege of loving her for a year in the privacy of our rooms and her attic and my treehouse, though that would never have been enough for me, no matter how deep our love ran for each other in our own worlds. I didn’t need a proclamation of love, just a confirmation that that’s what our confidential romance was. 

    Standing up with a shaky breath and the deepest feeling of remorse, the wind sounds like her voice, surrounding me in the familiarity of her melodies, the ones I always was hearing and missing: 

    “I love you.” 

    “I love you, too,” I reply to the wind and the sun. A tear rolls down my cheek. I blink the rest away. 

    “But we were never going to make it.” 

    I walk away with the wind howling around me and her voice still in my ears: 

    We were never going to make it. 

    I know that both she and the wind are right - we never had a chance - but loving her was a gift while it lasted. I know that, deep inside her, she thought so too. 

    Tomorrow I will bring flowers. Peonies and gerbera daisies. She said once if she had to pick her favorites it would be these - the ones she used to bring me in bouquets, the ones we would leave in vases in my old tree house. 

    The wind’s voice is still in my ears, but I’m hardly listening. It’s a small murmur of her voice: 

    We were never going to make it. 

    We were never going to make it. 

    We were never going to…