Dan Gia C. Manalio www.lifeissurreal.com He saw angels flying around the corners of the room. I’d look to see them for myself but I couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. He was my angel, he taught me everything I thought I knew about music, books, writing, and 70s polyester fashion. In him I saw what I wanted to be— creative, brilliant, in control of my life, free. Instead I was insecure, afraid, lonely. I’d tell him this, he’d tell me I was wrong— I was beautiful, inspiring, perfect. He made me think maybe he was right. I loved him more than I would ever love anybody even to this day. But not the way he wanted me to. Not the way a woman is supposed to love a man the way he said he loved me. I tried and tried to change that I tried so hard. But I wasn’t a woman and he wasn’t a man, we were 15, I didn’t know what that kind of love was. I loved that soon all sorts of boys would want to date me. I loved that I would get a driver’s license and no longer have to beg my dad to bring me to the mall. I loved the new Black Flag album and the latest style Doc Martens. And when he got sick (The doctors and all their textbooks called it sick), I thought I was sick too. I had to be because I was him and he was me no lines drawn in between. And then it was time for him to go away— he never once said the actual words but always promised the day they made him go he would shave off all his hair. When he came to say goodbye, I saw a light shining from his freshly revealed head. He would call me from that place to tell me about the angels. I imagined they were radiant and beautiful and free. He wouldn’t say much, lost in his own drugged haze of reality. Not the same drug that put him there but the one that was supposed to let him out. They called him schizophrenic I called him my best friend. To this day I stare at the corners of the room faithfully but still never see his angels.