I do not know how he became such a fragile plant. At school he was called Nettles. I was not called anything, but I wished I could have been something similar. Did he sting? Was he delicious? The other boys were loud, he was swaying in the wind beautifully.
By the time he was eighteen he had found a job at a warehouse. A welcome respite away from the house where his father opened the first beer before breakfast.
I never liked his coworkers. One of them had beady eyes, not like a rat but like a doll, lifeless and strange. Another one liked to show off his muscles. He used to walk with no shirt on even when it was too cold, and in Wales it is almost always too cold.
Once we went to see a film together, the four of us. The one with strange eyes had a nervous handshake, it felt like the whole man was shaking. The muscle boy kept eating sticky toffee, but every now and then he would spit it out, moaning about how sweet it was. Why eat it then? Perhaps he needed the energy. Then there was Nettles, as delicate as human beings are, looking like he wanted to say something but never finding the words. I cannot remember what the film was, pictures are not important, only people.
Now Nettles is in prison. The two others got off lightly because they did not accidentally kill anyone. If the guard had stayed quiet it would have been all right.
In prison Nettles has taken up weightlifting, but he does not walk around without a shirt. Maybe it is not allowed. Maybe he does not want to show himself to me. I would like to know nevertheless because I have promised to wait for him here. He pretended he did not know what I was talking about. As long as it takes, honey, we are two of a kind. Delicious, fragile, beautiful. My friend.