I sit tucked under Matt's arm, despite the unusual heat of a Georgian October, a heavy photo album in my lap. He tells me little stories as I admire the photos, recalling memories with a smile in his voice.
Matt and his brothers all have an album dedicated to documenting their growing up, but inevitably, there are many pictures of them together in the albums — Nick, he tells me, is the boy his 11 year old self is engaged in a lightsaber duel with; he's eight years old, and the baby he's cradling in his arms, with the aide of a pillow in his lap, is Tyler, about a week after he was born; in another, he's thirteen, peering over Lucas' shoulder to guide him through the game he's playing, matching looks of intense concentration on their faces.
There are photos of the first time he stood on his own, of him grinning the day he learned to ride a bike. In one picture, he stands poolside, doubled over laughing at something beyond the frame. In another, he's beaming, showing off the space left by a missing tooth. There are several candids of him at various ages with a console in his hand, or sitting at a computer desk; one of them shows him asleep on the couch, still wearing his glasses, a Game Over message displayed on the television screen.
In one photo, a grey-muzzled Rottweiler has him pinned to the floor, licking the side of his face. He's laughing, his hands blurred just a little, petting it maybe, or trying to push it off; but even with the fuzziness, I can see that there's a hospital bracelet on his wrist. Neither of us mention it.
We flip through pages and pages of tangled timelines — his childhood, his adolescence, holidays and birthdays, snapshots of achievements and smiles, glimpses of obvious "do you really need to take a picture?" moments that result in awkward poses and near-grimaces.
It's towards the back of the album that I see them.
In the first picture, Matt's smiling a little awkwardly under fluorescent lights, his nose is colored a sore-looking dark blush, and in his left nostril is a little, silver stud. In the second picture it, the stud has been replaced with a little black hoop. Matt looks bashfully into the camera, shoulders rolled forward under a black-and-white striped shirt, stained hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of skinny jeans, his hair a mop of brilliant cherry red.
"I was 15," he says, sounding like he expects me to mock him. "I had a sorta…punky phase for a year 'r two. Thought I looked kinda, I dunno, edgy or some shit," he chuckles uneasily.
I turn until I can see his face, reaching up to touch his jaw and gently turn his head to the side. He's watching me curiously from the corner of his eye, and I'm trying to imagine him with a shiny little ring in his nose and startlingly red hair, but I can't quite see anything but chestnut brown tresses. I poke the side of his nose, and he pants a little laugh.
"So what d'you think? Think 15 year old me woulda had a chance with 15 year old you?" He drawls, teasing, relaxed knowing that I'm not going to mock him. I nod, feeling his lips curve into a smile as I touch a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
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"…Can I ask you somethin'?"
"Which came first, the chicken of the egg?"
"The egg… Eggs were being laid for millions of years before anything evolved into what we know as a chicken."
"…I meant chicken eggs…"
"That isn't what you asked."
"Okay — the chicken or the chicken egg?"
"The chicken, then. Something would have had to evolve into a chicken before it could breed and lay an egg that would produce a chicken."
"…You really thought about this, huh?"
"Glass half empty or half full?"
"Mm…that depends on how the water level got to that point; were you pouring water into, or out of the glass?"
"Are they named for the color, or was the color named after them?"
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
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His hair is a rich, dark, brown. His eyes are mesmerising sapphire blue. His mole-speckled skin is a canvas for largely-dark hues — smokey grays, deep forest greens, midnight blues, and inky blacks. But to me, he's yellow.
Honey-hued when he holds me in the dark, hands warm and eager, his touch melting over my skin.
The warm glow of a candle when I recede into my mind, the gentle light a beacon, drawing me in, drawing me out.
Striking as highlighter ink when his moods are poor, attention grabbing, eye catching in all the wrong ways, disconcertingly vivid; or else the desaturated yellow of thin cloud cover over the morning sun, it's radiance just out of reach.
His smiles, his laughter, his joy, like the summer sun, brilliantly bright and bone-deep warm.
His heart is gold, pure and genuine, precious and beautiful.
I'm sure he sees himself as blue or gray, dark, dull, dismal… He's a sunflower — growing under the downpour of tear-drop blue, and the smothering thickness of gray cloud, stronger and brighter when it passes.
