I remember you and Katie flirting and how her eyes got bluer, they actually did.

I remember your spot-on imitation of unwittingly homoerotic evangelical rock.

I remember the places you lived: the ascetic’s studio over Gabe’s, where you could feel the bands through the floor; the blue-porched Victorian you shared with the philosophy grad student in the neighborhood of official grownups; the suburban two-bedroom, with the security code keypad and lots of carpeting. In every home you opened the door the same wide way: you smiled, come in, there was something you were thinking about.

I remember eating watery soup with old Mennonites in some farm town, and passing around actual mimeographs (they felt wet), and talking about nuclear disarmament and recipes.

I remember you describing the cross, and how nothing made sense to you without it, and how there should be a body on it, because there was and there are.

I remember how you dreaded the Fourth of July — idolatry of the nation state + explosions. You said you’d be hiding in a basement, like lots of other vets.

I remember talking on some long drive when my full-time love life was nothing if not exciting, but I wanted to be home, and I wanted to have children, and these states seemed impossible then. You said, so calmly, that you were sure that would happen, and I borrowed your peace for my own.