He taught me how to see the color green.
Not just green. But the desperate, almost-yellow green of the mango leaves outside the building right before the rains come. The deep, sleeping green of the moss on the old fountain where we’d sit, his thumb tracing circles on my wrist. “This one is my favorite,” he’d whisper, pointing to the jade shade of a 7/11 sign reflected in a puddle.
He made the world a secret language only we two spoke.
He was an artist. Not with a pen, but with his attention. He’d notice the way I’d tap my fingers three times on a table before an exam. He’d save the burnt, crunchy bits of rice from the bottom of the pot at the carinderia for me, because he saw my eyes light up for them once. He collected my quietnesses, my quirks, like they were rare stones.
He didn’t just listen to my words. He listened to the silence between them. He’d hear me not say I was scared, and his hand would find mine under the library table. A solid, warm weight. An anchor.
The circles on my wrist became less a ritual and more a reflex, then a memory. The greens he’d once named for me—the jade, the moss, the desperate mango-leaf green—would appear, and I’d hold my breath, waiting for his voice to give them meaning.
The silence between us, which used to feel like a comfortable blanket, began to feel thin. Brittle. He still looked at me, but his gaze had a new weight to it, like he was reading fine print on my face that he didn’t like.
One Tuesday, I pointed out a perfect, almost-violent green on a beetle’s shell. “Look,” I said.
He glanced.
He shrugged. “It’s just green.”
The words were a small, clean cut. Barely any blood. My heart started to feel like a frantic bird beating against a window.
Why can’t you see it’s me? It’s still me.
I tried to speak in our old tongue. I found a guitar pick, the green one with the chipped edge he’d always use, lost under a chair. I placed it on the desk in front of him. A tiny, plastic artifact from our history.
His eyes fell on it. For a fraction of a second, I saw a flicker—not of memory, but of recognition, like seeing a ghost of a person you barely remember. He didn't pick it up. He didn't smile.
He simply covered it with his notebook, a quiet, final act of burial. He didn't return it. He just made it disappear.
Then the hall was crowded, a river of bodies between classes. I saw him coming towards me, his head down, and for a moment, the current pushed us together.
There was no space.
Our shoulders didn't just brush, for a single, unavoidable second, my chest pressed against his arm, my face was close enough to smell the laundry soap on his shirt—the same one he’s always used. The scent was a punch to the gut, a memory of his head on my pillow.
He didn't flinch.
He froze.
His whole body went rigid.
And then, his head turned. His eyes, those eyes that used to crinkle at the corners just for me, were wide. Not with surprise, but with a kind of pure, unadulterated horror. As if my touch wasn't just unwelcome, but corrosive. As if I had just pressed a wound against him.
He didn't shove me. He didn't say a word.
He just looked down at his own arm, the one I had touched. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his other hand and began to brush at the sleeve of his jacket. Once, twice, three times. A hard, scraping motion with his palm, his fingers. Brushing me off. Brushing away the contamination.
He was erasing me. Right there, in front of everyone, in the middle of that crowded hall, he was performing a ritual of purification.
And when he was done, when he was sure every last particle of me was gone, he finally looked up. Not at my eyes, but at a point somewhere past my shoulder. And he walked away, leaving me standing there, feeling the shape of his disgust burned into the air where he had been.
....And then, I saw him at the fountain.
He was there, with someone new. He was pointing at the moss. And he was using his other hand to trace circles on the other boy’s wrist.
I didn’t feel a scream.
I felt a silence. A vast, hollowing silence.
I turned and walked away. And for the first time, I really saw the color green. Not his greens. The real ones. The vicious, triumphant green of the moss, claiming its space. The sickly green of jealousy. The dull, dead green of a bruise finally settling deep into the bone.
He didn’t teach me how to see color. He just taught me what it looks like when it all drains away. And now I’m left in a world that’s technically in color, but feels, and will always feel, like a long, slow, fading to gray.