I grew to know you while lying on a hill of grass. We spent an hour a day on our backs on the itchy green carpet outside the music building. Sometimes we would close our eyes against the blinding July rays and let the red glows and warm blankets of our eyelids help us drift to sleep. Other times, we would roll onto our stomachs and talk about Locke, or Kant, or Mill, or sometimes even Nietzsche. I had never been confident enough to discuss Nietzsche anywhere outside of our philosophy class. You made it okay. I had boy problems; your girlfriend was playing Frisbee a few meters away. Still, our time in the grass was ours, and it replenished me of patience for dealing with anyone else that was not you- not a perfect example of humanness. One day it rained, and you told me about wet, hot soccer in Colombia and wet, cold soccer in Harlow Town, England, and how someday you would take me to those places. One day I spent an hour carefully covering all your mosquito bites with blades of grass, and you sat up and threw every one of them at me as soon as I finished. And one day, you turned your head to look up at me and told me you loved me, and I knew you meant it.
Now, at home in steamy Bogota or humid Houston or chilly Harlow Town or wherever you are, whenever you're in the grass, I hope you think of me. Because whenever I curl my toes in a cool patch, I think of you. Of sleep, bugs, sun, and the summer I met my other half.