“Have you ever seen Star Wars?” he asks me, already sounding half-asleep. Evening has come and gone, and we are still on the roof. Our backs to its roughness. Eyes on the murky black extending in every direction. 

I’m tired too, unable to force the sarcasm out of my voice. “Unfortunately.” 

“You know the scene where - at the end of Empire Strikes Back, Luke is getting a new robot hand?”

“Yeah?”

He’s trying his best to be coherent, and I appreciate it. “Do you ever feel like that? Like, your body isn’t really yours, it’s just an imitation? And you look in the mirror and you’re like, that’s not me.”

“Sometimes I wish I did.” A beat. He’s waiting for me to continue, like he always does. I can’t see him in this dark. It’s a regular inconvenience. An excuse to fill in the blanks, to imagine his head tilted towards mine. “I spent so long thinking of my body as just a container for my brain. Now I groan when I sit down.”

When Luke receives his robot hand, it is because his flesh hand was cut off by his own father, Darth Vader. In the prequels, we learn Vader had three of his own limbs chopped off, by a man he likened to a father frequently. There is a philosophical way to read this. There are tears to be shed. I have none left. 

Another beat. “I’m all weak now. It sucks.” I gesture like he can see. 

“You talk like an old man,” he says. There’s a laugh behind his words, that finds its way out soon enough. His giggle fills up the night air. I inhale. It feels like a chug. “Wouldn’t it, though–wouldn’t it be scary? Being part machine?”

He talks in the hypothetical. My voice is a day-scraped monotone. “Not scarier than knowing if you cut your hand off, it’s not growing back.”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s more of an exhale than a word. “That’s true.”

At the end of Return Of The Jedi, Luke cuts Darth Vader’s hand off. It is something he does out of pure anger. A violent, impulsive act. Just when Luke is about to deliver the killing blow, we see him look at his own robot hand, and his father’s mechanical stump. In that moment, he spares his father. He saves the day. Luke’s hero’s journey is complete. And yet there is the hand - so inhuman, so vulnerable, so entwined with Luke’s being, forever. 

“I don’t think I’d get a robot hand if I didn’t have to,” I say. The words come out rushed, because they are. “It’s just…not the worst case scenario.”

“Also true.”

This is the roof of an old, creaky building no one lives in anymore. We found it on a hike, months ago. I didn’t hike before him. Right now, I should be terrified of this building crumbling beneath us. I’m not. My heart is steady. My pulse is a gentle drumbeat. I just listen to him inhale, holding my own breath, letting him take over the night. 

“I’m glad we did this before school starts,” he says. A transitional sentence. 

“Me too.”

We are going to the same school. This is not a goodbye. Nonetheless, we know we are different people in classrooms than we are on rooftops. Inside school doors, I am an aspiring teacher’s pet. Not disciplined enough to get good grades, but certainly trying. He is the bad boy. Skipping class and going to the movies. We are like this because of our parents. We are like this because of the lines on our palms. There is no use in denying the body. I wish I could always be cloaked in the dark. I wish he wasn’t getting ready to drive me home. 

The day we met plays in my mind so often, I think I could paint it. I told him my name was Alexander, and he shook my hand. He said his name was Marcos, and he thought my name was so cool, it sounded royal. His name sounded so good coming out of his mouth. It was unfair. I couldn’t repeat it. Back then I still went to church. I could not bear to say his name in my prayers, but it wound itself around every pillar and pew anyway, stronger than hymns.

He starts talking again, his words soft. “I just realized last night that I’ve known you longer than like, anyone else. And I don’t want to lose that.”

“Same,” I say. It’s not enough. 

The first secret I ever told him here was that I still prayed. Just not to God. To a small statue of Mother Mary, in my bedroom. He said it made sense. Of course all he knew of Mary was that she appeared on a gun in Romeo + Juliet, but his agreement was so comforting I pretended he knew more. The night after we met I knelt in front of her and asked for him to be nice to me. He always was.

“You’re very important to me,” I say. The words come, clunky and vague. “I’m glad I met you. I pray for you.”

He understands, and he outstretches his hand, and I outstretch mine, and it takes a bit but we find our way to each other. The stars arrive, and I can see him a little better. My tongue wets my teeth, trying to taste this feeling. Process it like one processes a polaroid. I love him like water loves an open wound. And I don’t think victory was meant for us. Not now, not ever. But I know this night was assembled by the hands of God, given to us in one of His more merciful moments. And I’m grateful.

Tonight I will kneel before Mary, and I will thank her for keeping her promise. We will go back to school, and we will restart our lives, and I will love him all the more.