***** -
I am at school, and I think of you. It seems as if the Fates are pitted against us - just when we begin to rekindle a friendship, fire sweeps through my house. It has a suspiciously godlike quality to it, doesn't it? I've been smitten for pursuing a hope of you.
I found the most disturbing letter today... It read something like: "*****, I miss you, please call me. To whom it may concern: if ***** is gone, please call and let me know" signed with her name and phone number. It seems as if everyone is resigned to my failing health. I, personally, feel much better. Consequently, I have shirked some of the medical tests to which I should have gone, but I will reschedule them eventually.
I don't know why I am writing to you, but having just opened with the trivial I feel much better. I suppose it has become a habit, to write spattered bits of prose to you as a form of release (and in my more drunken states, even deliver them). We were best friends, once - do you remember? Perhaps you are the only person whom I really trusted. You never lied to me, or rarely so, and that is undyingly admirable to me.
I miss your face, your smile, the feel of you, the way you touched me. I have always had a bad memory, and how I wish I could remember more of you. All I have now are scattered fragments of days, snatches of conversation, some so embarassing I blush to to think of it, some so wildly passionate my face flushes, echoing the heat that builds in other places. The waitress at Denny's knows no difference, just sees a letter addressed to a boy in my hands and smiles.
If piecemeal is how I must have you, then I am determined to do so - moments of stolen kisses, nights blanketed by your arms, the smell of you, the movement of your muscles under your flesh, the way you hold your pool cue, the way you hold your hands, all of these things and every bit of you I am determined to have, if only in fantasy. I have found the only two worthwhile pursuits, as of yet: the quest to learn everything I can about truth and the nature of truth, and the pursuit of having you look at me without the gleam of pain or fear in your eyes. Someday, perhaps, or until I am struck with something so full of meaning that I forget the way you looked at me, from under your eyebrows, over clasped hands. You thought you could hide, but it was never so. I saw you. And I can only hope that you saw me, and that, perhaps, we may see each other again.
While I once felt a mountain wildflower blooming in my breast, rare and beautiful reaching through the cold air toward the sun, it was so quick to whither with the first touches of flakes of snow. And while we have had a long and dark winter, yielding to a spring which was so late to come, underneath the thick layers of snow a seed of hope was harbored there. As the ice melts away, I feel a new sprout within me. It is a mountain bloom, again, but this time far more hearty, with roots embedded deep within the skree on the mountainside. A bush from which soon roses may bloom, though they are but buds, now, and will not be without their thorns. The same winter which killed my wildflower laid the snow which now melts to water my mountain roses. We learn from the past - we lean and we change adn we continue to strive through the cold air towards the sun.
Years, *****. Can you believe it? Years and years, even. Almost five now?
You once wrote to me that you saved my love letters - a pile of pages that say someone once cared for you a great deal. Then what are these love letters, never delivered? Someone still cares for you a great deal - I do. And this pile of pages grows only larger with time. Someday, when I am gone, someone will find them and envy the passion I have for you. How misinformed they'll be! The question is: "Is it better to have loved and lost?..." We fell so fast and so young. Your touch has hardened my skin against any other hand, your eyes, so full of meaning, leaving all others' gaze mere void to me. I look around and find no interest in what I see, only fragments and glimpses that remind but cannot compare. And the question is still there - is it better to have found and lost? Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have not felt your touch, your gaze, to look about me without wishing every face were yours. Those are the days when I can almost bring myself to the bitter finality of an answer. But even now, on a page none will read but she, both questioner and questioned, I cannot even write it down. Even if it comes to be these new mountain roses never spread their petals, I would not trade what you and I had for all of possibility. I miss you with every part of me - I ache for your face, your voice, the moment when I can once again walk into your arms and feel that "yes, someone cares for me, a great deal, and I have found him," even if I must then follow it with "and I have lost him."
I miss you, *****. From the very marrow of my bones to the warmth of softer folds to the tough fibers of my worn heart, I miss you. And I long for you.
Until once again pen greets paper with futile confessions of yearning,
I love you
- *.