Five, Seven, Five

If you aren’t reading Kerri Anne, you are missing out of one of the blogosphere’s greatest treasures. She’s funny, she’s smart, she uses the word rad and it sounds right, she is a pop-culture junkie, she takes the most breathtaking photos, she brings me to tears when she writes about her dad, she’s just one of the most lovely people on this planet. I love her, even if we disagree re: Shia LaBeouf. ~Ali

The first and last haiku ever written for and about me was penned in fifteen minutes, in the middle of an undergraduate collegiate course
 that was so long it never ceased to inspire me to write during the three hours wherein I should have been paying rapt attention to gods and goddesses, endless illustrations of heavenly jealously, and women who mysteriously became trees to explain a particularly devastating season of drought.

I remember how he was counting syllables on long fingers that matched his long and lean frame one Monday night, Dr. Steiner’s wit and favorite bow tie center-stage. Dr. Steiner noticed, too, and asked him–the rest of us pretending to be studious, aloof–what he was doing. “Counting syllables for a haiku,” he answered honestly and without a moment’s wavering. The professor seemed to
 be momentarily taken aback by his candor; then, his stern and inquisitive look turned into a warm and affectionate
 smile. “OK, then. Proceed.”

Kerri bred the rain,
falling like a crest of waves
washing over me.

He always knew how to charm the professors, even the ones who assumed he was wasting talent, and thus were
 vocally frustrated with him on a daily basis. He laughed off all concern the way he laughed at me 
whenever I told a joke that probably wasn’t as funny as he would lead me to believe it was. He was great for confidence
 boosting, when he wanted to be. He was also great at two-sentence emailing, and lengthy letter-writing. He could always be suffocatingly
 affectionate and present while simultaneously maintaining a noticeable disconnect. It was an interpersonal gift, one as annoying as it was beautiful.

From the moment he met me, he saw me, watched me, studied me. He let his heart dance toward me even while I didn’t know how to talk to him, 
didn’t know how to act around him; he continued to look at me longingly even after I shirked his repetitious and heartfelt 
advances for months. He wrote me more letters than all of my friends and family combined. He wrote them because something reminded him of me. He wrote them to pledge his affection and to ask for second, third, fourth chances. He wrote them to share poetry. He wrote them for no reason.

Every day I received one in the mail, every day a slender hand-written envelope was waiting for me on the table when I returned home for the day, was a better day. Because of him, because of his words.

I never once wrote him back. Not once. I never expressed how grateful I was to know him. How grateful I was to have had his affection, if only for a time, even though I could never return it the way he wanted me to. I never told him how worthy he made me feel, and how I needed his friendship more than I ever realized.

A year earlier he had accepted a teaching position in Middle Of Nowhere, Alaska. Before that trek he had moved back to his hometown, some four and half hours away from mine. Home of tulip farms I had once coveted and still hold in my head fondly, a cherished memory of a favorite day-trip. That day, visiting carefully crafted rows of fauna, I took so many pictures I thought I would never stop developing tulips. Pink, and yellow, orange and red: vibrant tulips showcased their pretty petals on roll after roll of film.

I missed him when he left, like I missed the tulips when I left them. I can’t find any of those original pictures; they were probably lost years ago, but their colors still dance brilliantly in my head whenever I ask them to. So does he.

He mailed our first wedding gift. A bake set off our Target registry. $9.99 plus tax. Was it ironic that years of friendship and curtailed intimacy had led to sheets modeled to perfectly suit cookies I have never been skilled at baking? It probably should have been.

I kept the card to remember who I was in his eyes; I remember how graceful and strong and competent he always saw me, even when I felt like I was perpetually flailing. Dr. Ladish, it read. It made my heart flutter in my chest each time I read it, just like it did the day I opened the bake set I had no intention of really using.

For years after the first time he ever uttered it, before he ever wrote it, I would have fleeting fantasies of acquiring my PhD just to see my name officially written as such, just so I could show him, on letterhead I would mail, and he would laugh, and I would laugh, and we would remember how we smiled at each other the first night we met and there were tulips in both of our eyes.