We were 14 and 13 the last time I held your hand. Frozen in time and Washington D.C.’s wintery crispness, the green of your bomber jacket and the pink of my cheeks stand sharp against the pale sky. Fragmented by the knobby gnarled trees and their lingering fingers, shivering as they wait for spring. Your hand was warm, grasping mine firmly – fingers interlocked – the smell of tobacco gently seeping from your skin to mine.

We were the best ages in those days. You, too young for machismo and sarcasm; me, yet unfettered by insecurities and ugly words. Both of us raging against innocence before our 8:00 curfews.

For a second I wish I had access to the exact details from those days. The look on your face, the smell of your skin, the sound of your laugh. The slow smooth way your Spanish wrapped around me and nestled in my heart. I never told you those things. We were eons apart.

I remember the days we would make a run for it. The calls to your school secretary (it never failed to amaze me that they took my word that I was your mother) stating that you were sick.  I remember the giddy way we’d hold our breath as I dialed and spoke – shh! shh! SHHH!!!ing each other as I tersely parted with as few words as possible into the receiver as you crouched beside me. I remember the way we’d flop onto the couch with relief, separated only for a second until you grabbed my hand and we ran, laughing, to the metro.

We spent those days wandering around the mall, in and out of the museums, as many as I could get you into. There was something about standing next to you in the darkness, gaping in awe at the sheer size of the blue whale in the Museum of Natural History that sticks to me. When I think about those moments now, it’s almost as if I could reach out in to the dark and touch you, stuck there in the past.

That winter was really our last moment together. I came back that next summer and became entangled with your brother. Briefly. For which I am pretty sure you never forgave me. He was never the same to me as you. Older, yes. Which makes me feel more shallow than you will ever know or I will ever get a chance to confess to you. I will never forget all the moments that I tried to look behind the swoop of your black hair into your eyes for forgiveness, but that sweep, it hid you well. Hid you from me, heart, hands, and soul.

And what was there between us after that, really?

Time.

Distance.

The frantic pangs of adolescence that blurred all those days and days and days until you found yourself standing on a porch with your girlfriend and your unborn child and her infuriated ex-boyfriend, a gun pointed at you.

And I? A world away on some dot in the Pacific feeling the news of your death freeze me to the clammy tile floor, breathless. Regretting that I put myself in your brother’s hands instead of yours. What I would give to find myself tearing down the sidewalk outside the Smithsonian with you again, laughing ourselves into hysterics as we wove in and out of the hotdog vendors, inebriated with the freedom and possibilities of just one day.

One day I’ll meet you there. Bring your bomber jacket.