Janani was the last friend of yours I know at your side. And it seems significant to me that she was. She’s a culturally Hindu agnostic girl with recent Buddhist leanings who sometimes identifies as a boy. Here’s a common cup: she loved you — the straight, blonde evangelical-turned-would-be-priest who could still quote chapter and verse.

 

Two days before you died, she brought you bananas that you could not eat, one of which broke from its stem.

 

She wrote a long note, which was “raw,” she said, like she felt.

 

“I honestly don’t know how much he heard or understood. I read all the letters [sent from friends] and he just seemed to be sleeping. […] Then I talked to him for a while and gave him some hugs, and then he woke up — in a manner of speaking. His eyes opened and he appeared to focus on [his mother and me] for awhile. I kept talking — I don’t think he knew it was me.

 

‘Let them in,’ he said, in a very small voice. ‘Let them in.’

 

Then: ‘friend?’ (As in, ‘is it a friend?’)

 

Then he grabbed my hand really tight and his mom asked if he wanted me to go (I was about to leave) and he said no no no.

 

Even though I still don’t think he knew who I was.

 

I put my head down on his chest and cried all over his hospital gown.

 

To get all the time back.”

 

She said the “shapes and shadows” of you were so clear, and all your “sharp bones.”