The blood moon sat. “Sitting” really is the best way to describe it. “Hung”, “draped”, and “peered” all imply a sort of grace that wasn’t there. It looked like a fist of clay plopped twenty stories off the ground. We had gotten up at three AM to watch it from the cemetery a few blocks away during October of 2014, when the valley was particularly black. Robby wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. We were minuscule and massive.

This memory trickled through my consciousness on our three year anniversary, which was June 28. I asked Robby what his favorite memories of us were.

“Being in that Kroger,” he said, “and knowing I had a chance.”

That one was better than the blood moon. In the first months of seeing each other (nothing official, or even close), we broke things off two or three times. Each. This creates a fractured timeline that we occasionally mull and argue over. “We were together on Valentine’s Day, right?” “No, I made specifically sure that we weren’t.” But we both agree that our unofficial relationship hit a turning point in a Kroger at 10PM. On Tuesday, I told Robby that we’d be better as friends. On Saturday, I realized my mistake moments after I woke up. I asked him to accompany me to Kroger that night—I’m not even sure if I needed to go shopping. Circumstances surrounding this past breakup felt finite and I knew I was losing him.

“I want you to know that I like you,” I said. I tried to stand up straight and look forward, but the sentence came out in spurts. I was acutely aware of how juvenile the situation was—making up an excuse to see a boy and tell him I liked him while pretending to shop for cereal, and being decently nervous the whole time. But as soon as it was out of my mouth, hope loosened within each of us.

The blood moon came months later, and New Zealand came after that, and floating down the Roanoke River in July came after that, and then a breakup, then a repair. A Christmas, a graduation, months apart, another breakup and repair, a lease, a puppy, plans. It feels longer than three years, as good ones often do.

The thickly packed time frame makes writing this piece difficult. I want each post to be a bright little capsule that pops at the beginning and sizzles at the end. I’ve contemplated organizing this piece into a list of memories, or things I’ve learned about Robby and myself, or simply detailing the day of our anniversary. Some method to make a thousand days easier to process and convey.

I’ve decided that, since I’ve already described the beginning, I’ll simply jump to the present: On June 29, Robby and I walked Orion down Virginia Avenue. He pawed past the playground on our usual route. It was recently remodeled; sleek, whirling contraptions that looked nothing like the playgrounds of my childhood connected to one another in a complex web. I told Robby I was sad our anniversary was over. It was a busy Wednesday that had passed without consequence, like a forty-sixth birthday or a seventh grade graduation. I didn’t have much time for my heavy-handed reminiscent moments.

One of the playground’s alien cylindrical frames twisted gently in the wind and I imagined the early times when I tried to distance myself from Robby. He was cute, but I didn’t see things going anywhere. I probably said those exact words at some point. But three years of two people doling out a thousand chances had constructed something new.

Robby sighed and edged closer as we approached a patch of cartoon-looking flowers. I could tell he was on the precipice of one of his sweeping, simple statements that create closure using logic. His arm fell across my shoulders and he said, “We’re two people who love each other, buddy. Every day is our anniversary.”