I Should Have Met You by Nate and Mali

Learn & Share Anonymously

ISHMY — 2025-08-27 08:44:30 UTC

Your work will be anonymous, and no real names will be used without permission. We encourage everyone to submit something! If you need inspiration, take a look through what others have written, and they might inspire you. If you can, share out the link to this forum wherever possible. We want as many people as possible to not only enter a story, but to read other peoples. We're grateful for every entry: every submission will help us to write I Should Have Met You!

All our love,

Mali and Nate

ISHMY — 2025-08-27 09:03:47 UTC

i’m gonna write about Rodriguez, I think. the singer. I first heard him when Mum played me Sugar Man in 2022 and then I watched the documentary and I thought, 'wow. I feel like this is what I’ve been looking for'. and I would just sit in my room and play him over and over and I studied him intenseluy, I read all the archives about him until I felt like I loved him. not like a fan girl might love someone in One Direction. I loved him like maybe he was me? or he was who I wanted to be in this world. not a singer per say, but a good person. a poet quietly, poor but happy, you know? the people that I listened to, they began to change when I started listening to him. Everything changed. I wanted to embody him. I wanted my life to be about him. I just started collecting memorabilia and learning everything that I could, until I could recite his life stories, I could recite every lyric to every song of his. every song on every album. every cover. every tour. he’s so important to me. He changed my life and didn’t even know. I might not listen to him as much all these years later I still feel this connection to him, and when he passed away, I cried. I cried for so long because I felt like I knew him, and I still mourn him. I can feel that his presence has gone, even though I live in Adelaide and he lived in Detroit, Michigan. I can still feel that he’s not with us anymore in this plane. he floats around me in the air, and I can see him in the leaves falling from the trees, and when the waves hit the shore, I really miss him. I really really miss him.

2025-08-27 09:06:34 UTC

You’re sitting behind me on your fabric fold-out chair, and your eyes are glued to the sky. There’s not a cloud in sight, my thighs itch on the uncut grass and a slater bug is rolled up in my palm, afraid. My back rests gently on your calf, this point of contact grounding me in the garden. The banana tree is full of green fruit. I hear a magpie lark singing. And suddenly you’re excited, babbling, gesturing for me to look up. I raise my nose to the sky and while my eyes adjust to the sunlight, I see a perfect stream of white jetting across the ether, the tiny dot of a plane leading its way. This beautiful thing, you’re trying to make out what sort of plane it might be, but I’m mesmerised by this stream, like a homemade cloud, like a road through the endless blue. It feels like the barrier between us and the sky, like if this perfect jet-stream snapped, the stars would come crashing down into our laps. Or maybe we’d come crashing into theirs. And I look back at you, how your eyes focus so serenely on this massive sky.

ISHMY — 2025-08-28 07:37:34 UTC

This is for my uncle Tony

I hear a lot of stories about you, and I wish I could’ve been there. I know your hair went grey in your 20’s, I know you loved to bike ride, and play music. I sometimes pretend I’m with you in the gardens. We’re only fourteen.

I guess we’d been swimming, my hair feels soft like it goes when it’s been in saltwater. Your shirt has damp spots all over it. There’s a towel hanging over a chair. And you’ve got your guitar and we’re underneath these perfect trees that seem to cover over the sky, like a roof, like a cage. You’re teaching me to play Simon and Garfunkel and I’m thinking ‘we’re so old’ and I finally get the chord right. Janine sits a little while away and she’s drawing with charcoal, she keeps looking up at me and staring intently at my chin, then my cheeks, then my ears, my hair, my nose. Then back to drawing. And you say, ‘ok now play the whole song’ and I stumble through it but almost -through the missteps and flat notes- I can hear The Sound Of Silence. The sun pokes through the leaves above in tiny rays that seem to dance around us, I’m looking at you and I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Welcome

ISHMY — 2025-08-28 08:05:44 UTC

This forum is a place to collect stories for a new work, written by Mali Harkin-Noack and facilitated by Nate Charles Karagiannis-Troisi.

We're collecting stories about people that you think about a lot, but who aren't currently in your life. For example it could be a family member you haven't seen in years, an ex, or someone that you feel you didn’t get to know well enough before went away. It could be about a celebrity or historical figure you feel a connection to but haven’t met.

We're also collecting stories about parasocial relationships- obsessions with fictional characters, celebrities, or ideas. If you have a story about this from somewhere, we'd love to hear it.

For me, this started from writing about my grandfather, who passed away in 1996, decades before I was born, but I think about him all the time. For you it could be something different. Anything is acceptable, everything is brilliant - no rules, 5 words or 1000 words. You will remain completely anonymous, so feel free to stay and browse other people’s stories too if you need inspiration.

2025-09-02 08:37:34 UTC

In a photo from long ago. You are not smiling. But your teeth are visible. Black and white.

Everyone said you "weren't that bad". Even though I never inferred you were.

I had a nightmare about that photo when I was 5.

I don't even know your name

2025-09-02 09:53:08 UTC

Would Baa have been this much of a bitch if you hadn’t left us so early and were still here?

Dada, we never met, but I miss you <3

Love,

-H xx

ISHMY — 2025-09-02 23:35:09 UTC

You're balding, have this big grey moustache. There's this photo of you holding my older sibling. You're wearing retro sunglasses.

I always think this depiction of you is really cool.

2025-09-03 01:36:26 UTC

I think my mum used to have a crush on you.

My Dad found out about it and said you have small hands.

He used to do an impression of you trying to use a keyboard with your very small hands. My mum would laugh until there were tears in her eyes.

Thank you for that. I don’t see them laugh together often. Especially now.

If it wasn’t for your small hands I don’t know if I’d have a memory of my parents being in love.

2025-09-18 07:11:13 UTC

Growing up my nonno was always my favourite person and when I would talk to mum about him she would turn around and tell stories about his mum, my great grandmother.

The stories that stick out are about her eating habits. Stay with me here, if she had a block of chocolate she would eat one small square a night until it was all gone. Tub of ice cream would be one tea spoon a night till it was all gone. I wonder what instilled those eating habits and I wonder how pure of a person she would’ve been.

2025-09-18 11:49:54 UTC

In another world, I’m sitting next to you in the cinema and watching a very specific movie.

I can hear your laugh louder than anyone else’s in the darkness of the movie theatre, and I see you reach for your hanky during the sad parts near the end. I have fantasised about watching this movie with you so much, it has nearly calcified into a memory.

Sometimes I almost convince myself heaven is real. Life would be brighter if I believed I would see you again

2025-09-21 12:21:40 UTC

My nonno died when I was 1. Everyone told me that he loved me so much but because I was so young I do not remember any of our memories together.

2025-09-25 00:53:52 UTC

I can only really imagine about what his new friends are like. I wonder a lot if they’re like me. Does he seek the same people that you used to? Do they make the same jokes, have the same interests? How do I have FOMO for a group of people I’ve never met?