fishing in the tall grass

I'm quite certain that if I leave this here, you'll find it; in our old sandbox sitting like a digital time capsule waiting for you to get bored and itchy again with curiosity.

Your sister liked my facebook status last week and of course then I dreamed that I was writing to you. I've been dreaming letters to you for six years, on and off. I close it down but then something like a Like from one of your people pops up (did you never tell them you ghosted me?) or a Memories notification or spring in Paris or Hopkins in an anthology, each time it's a kickball to the face. I'm sorry, that's a ridiculous metaphor, however I've searched and there is no other. I so wanted your input when I was teaching literature in China. We did The Importance of Being Earnest, my students and I. We read, well I'm not going to list them all. It was a hard season for me when it came to missing you. I think I wanted to write this because somehow now, after all this time, I think I've finally understood your last email which perhaps has more to do with my journey with myself than anything else; but only you will ever know what you truly meant.

I do, however, want to say that I never wanted anything more from you than what we had. I still don't agree with your choice. I don't think it was necessary. Distance, real distance, has taken the edge off of even my closest friendships. If I was ever a burden to anyone before, I'm only a forty minute skype once a year for most now, and the occasional text. What with the patience you didn't have, we could have become the same (which is, it doesn’t need to be said, at least something and a whole lot better than nothing). 

Whenever I want to write to you I tell myself not to. I tell myself you don't deserve it. All of my cardigans have lasted longer than our romance of a friendship and now I've not-known you longer than I knew you; one more year and all my cells will have rejuvenated since I last hugged you last. I'll be composed entirely of matter I've seen, consumed, breathed in your absence. All of my cardigans have lasted longer, and yet, I'm still wearing you. If I did let myself write; what would I say? I miss two thousand and twelve when the internet was an open heartstring and I was young enough to write things without thinking. I hope I'm still the same me that you knew and loved although sometimes I don't see her. I still love hoodies and coffee and black and white photos and teacups with blue designs; but I seldom put on a hoodie these days. I miss driving my car and I miss the rain and the pacific northwest; Seattle coffee shops. Fancy Tuesdays.  

I am, a better student now. You should see me student now. Nobody can out-student me now.

Maybe you weren't wrong to do with you did. Although I think you suspected something of me which was never true, I can't deny that after all this time, on the days when I'm not angry I still, well I still love you enough that I'd willingly give you all that you came here looking for without interrogation. The heavy, weighted silences in a room dimly letting evening slip by with mutual knowing. That thing which is that thing which is that knowing that someone else gets you that thing that’s so hard to come by in friendships past a certain age. All the questions gone unanswered here for five or six years.I'd slip them out of my bag and spread them on the table top in cafe ladro for you to examine and turn over in your hands.

Here, I'll do you a few. Yes, Korea and China were unutterably difficult in ways I never could fit in a photo on instagram. No, I haven't kept in touch well with my family; my mother doesn't call me and I've stopped calling her. Paris is everything you'd expect it to be and only in the spring does it make me think of you, unexplicably so. Germany is less of what I love. When I walk into a theatre, whenever I walk into a theatre, I feel melancholy and miss you. The last time this happened was in Edinburgh.

Yes, it's been four years since you wrote but now I think I finally can let myself really see what you were saying; and I'm not sorry for what I was. The world is full of shallow ties and people you won't miss for years at a time; easily replaceable. Six years and I still dream I'm writing you,