1) Watch The Bachelor, obviously. After finishing our Blue Apron (having argued again about how long to cook the chicken). You secretly film my reactions to the Rose Ceremony. Laugh at the way I go from feigning indifference to yelling at the screen. To saying, "Can you believe the way these people sabotage their own happiness?"
2) Listen, still groggy with sleep, to you tell me about your night’s dreams. I squint at the light coming through the blinds. Your large eyes, unblinking, examine my face. "You should write those dreams down," I say. "I should write them all down."
3) Stand on our balcony and watch you drive away in a rush, the boys due to arrive. You take the left turn off Continentals Ave, accelerate – small in the gray sedan – away, up Ralston. Going to your mother's for the weekend. Until Sunday evening, when you call or text, asking when you can come home.
4) Walk to 122nd and Adam Clayton Powell. Take the M2 to 110th, east to 5th Ave, down to 92nd. Get off the bus and walk to 2nd Ave, to wait outside Knickerbocker Plaza for you to descend. Hail a cab or walk with you to NR. Hot ramen. Later, at Bar & Essen, a nightcap. The slow walk back. Outside Knickerbocker I hug you and tell you I love you and watch you pass through your lobby, see you say goodnight to the doorman. I walk then for a while. At some point rent a Citi bike and ride back to Harlem, using the Central Park loop, crying or trying not to cry.
5) Stand holding you, my eyes closed. Rest my chin on top of your head; inhale. Think: A perfect fit.
6) Argue with you about getting a dog.
7) Drive together up the coast to Crescent City, on to Portland, or down the coast to Monterey, or from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. Or in an Uber along the Cabo San Lucas coastline. Or, most memorably, on a luminous Saturday morning, from Belmont to Berkeley, to the Wright Institute for your applicant's interview, to the beginning of the rest of your life.
8) Hold you while you remember your father.
9) Help you: edit a paper, decipher a reading, think through a patient, compose an email, cope with one of your brothers’ calls. Brew your morning coffee, brew our nighttime tea, undress you, fall asleep in your arms, fall back asleep (after telling you, "A nightmare. It’s Ok. You're safe").
10) Weep like this. Motionless, silent – stunned by gratitude and regret and terror. Because I don't know how to imagine a world without you. A siren goes by, fades; Harlem light, so unlike California's – colder, more severe – falls on some flowers I put in the window. I think, One day this grief will pass. But I don't want it to pass. Then you'll really be gone.
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