I can feel the force of your almost-touch through the Internet.

The few minutes we spent chatting has summoned you to my side. I’ve spent so long calling you to me that it’s automatic even now.

It’s been five years since the time I first fancied you. We’ve been through the whole cycle of crushes and friendship – well, except the part where you liked me… I’ve blushed when the little girls on the soccer team I coached asked me in a whisper whether you were my boyfriend. You smirked at me from the grass and let me know that you were very much aware of what was going on. I spent a morning staring out the window and imagining the landscape underwater, with giant paddle-limbed dinosaurs swimming up to a sun dappled surface. And I imagined you marrying her and having little children. It gave me a peculiar sort of ache. The sort of ache that echoes through me every time you mention her.

Because I think, in the end, she is to you what you are to me. 

I understand this from our chats in the car when a certain song on the radio reminded you of her.  I understand this from the way you cling to her friendship the way I’ve clung to ours. I understand this because the smudge of her cheating has left a blot on her sparkling personality that defies your sense of logic, just as your laughing egotism perplexes me.

I do not blame you for it. How can you help it? How can I?

Things have changed now. I no longer consider us to have the least bit of potential for a romantic entanglement. I’m largely content to have our times at Starbucks. Me quizzing you on your recent flights of fancy and the effects of your charms, and you trying to get me to visit you and step outside of my comfort zone. 

I’ve been in both of your bedrooms, played with your Star Wars action figures, and drank lemonade on your porch. I’ve judged your cologne choices, fled as you chased me around the farm, and done any other number of wonderful friendly things.

See I’ve painted you with these broad and colorful strokes, using soccer field green to cover the way that I sometimes still allow myself to look at you. The bright red of a plastic sled hides that time you kept trying to hold my hand when you were drunk. And I need a white as bright as milk, as snow, as lightning, to obscure the dark of the night that you held me. The way that your fingers traced my hairline, my eyebrows, my lips, and the hot, gentle circles that you blew onto my cheeks must be treated as blots on our record and whited out.

Because it will never happen again. And your lips will never touch mine.

 Every little touch that thrummed through me months and years ago must now be allowed to fade behind the newly formed layers of fondness and friendship as even I admit that there is something better out there for both of us.

 

And I ought not imagine that I can feel your almost-touch through the Internet.

-M

5 comments add comment

  • a
9 years ago

i am crying because this is my situation, like my EXACT same situation..

  • anonymous lover
9 years ago

This is so beautiful.

  • anonymous lover
9 years ago

This is so absolutely beautiful.

  • anon
9 years ago

Damn. This ..... this is wonderful

  • Yours Truly
9 years ago

Thank you for sharing this

add comment

Email is optional and never shown. Leave yours if you want email notifications on new comments for this letter.
Please read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before commenting.