Whether she saw you as I did: indelibly tinted, remained between us, like time spent unintentionally painting in personality cracks, it was never enough just to seem. She would say I needed to get closer; I would step back. Straightforward complications realise least. If it hadn’t taken me so long to understand that, I might have relied less on memory and more on… well on something that didn’t recall itself before I was ready or even able to judge.