Three words through two

Nothing had changed across the years.

Nursery we sat beside each other, he knew how I would look just before I would cry.

He knew I hated acknowledging I was crying or hated to cry in public.

He knew I imagined myself  a bumble bee.

He knew my anger. He knew how I would not shout that my best expression in anger was a sullen silence.

And for every emotion all I had to do was tell him, “Alan” and to his response “ who” I would add “Anusha”

It remained the code across for every set back… the day my dad died it was again “ Alan. Who …Anusha”

It remained the code when I stepped onto his wedding stage hardly a week after my dad died and Alan forgot all public decorum and almost said with glee to his bride, “ here comes… this is the baby I spoke to you about…” It didn’t matter when he saw I had lost track of time and space a while, “ it remained three mumbled words that meant everything to two two year old heads that were stuck in a moment in space.

They were words we had grown used to since we were two and a half years…. Maybe even at sixty in our minds we would ever remain two and life’s intricacies would require only three mumbled words”

Across the years, I again dial his number…. I don’t tell him anything… I don’t tell him I met somebody yesterday who used the word escapism…and how it set me thinking... he knows it the way I say the first word, he the second and I the third.