dear you.

Dear You,

This has never happened to me before. I’ve fallen hard, even fallen in love, but not with a best friend. Not so unexpectedly. Truth be told, I think I started falling for you a long time ago, and I didn’t even know it. I think maybe it could have been when you and I spent an evening with a Razr scooter, hunting for and taming rocks, only to steal paint and paint them with beautiful words and swirls. Maybe when we exchanged painted rocks, we were unknowingly exchanging pieces of our hearts. Or maybe they really were just rocks. Maybe it was the night that we made spaghetti, and you laughed at my shoddily diced up Swiss cheese pieces in comparison to your own perfectly shredded ones. The same night, you sat on the kitchen counter, coloring in O’s while we spoke of childhoods that now seem so far away. Or maybe it was the night that the two of us went shopping for sweet potatoes and eggs, and were tempted to make a gingerbread house. We trudged through the frozen mud and ice, having to hold onto each other while descending the hill on the far side of the road. Maybe it was because we couldn’t feel each other’s touch through our winter layers that we didn’t yet know what we were holding inside of ourselves. Maybe it was when you didn’t have your trusty cheese grater, and had to hand cut the potatoes, and you photographed me as I fried latkes in sizzling oil. Maybe it was when I photographed you eating our collective creation. It could have been when we got caught up for hours in the craft store, playing with wind-up toys, batons, buying penknives with lollipops. Perhaps it was exchanging intoxicated origami creations, building a fort and growing animals, eating Pez upside-down. Was it the night your teapot broke? The night it shattered into a million pieces in one nanosecond, and I picked them all back up, careful not to miss any, cutting my finger and bleeding, but never mentioning it to you? The next morning when I tried my best to glue all of the hopeless pieces back together for you, but only ended up breaking your beloved teapot more and gluing all of my fingers together, rendering me useless? I don’t think I knew it yet, but I was trying to impress you and failed. If it wasn’t the teapot, it was most certainly the goodbye. We looked at each other, suddenly realizing in the same moment that this separation would mean more than we’d ever thought it would, and as I hugged you close and tight, I knocked your hat off, only realizing how special that hug was as I stepped back and you caught it, putting it back on your head. Whenever it was, it happened, and it’s still happening. And I’m afraid of it happening. And I want it to happen. And I’m mortified of it. And I’m enthralled by it. And I just don’t want to jump, only to find out that you’re not there to catch me. I don’t want to be broken again, like I was sitting in that car, the blood streaming from every orifice of my face, my body in knots. I’m putting all of my trust in you, giving you my heart should you want to accept it, and hoping that if you don’t, you’ll hand it back to me carefully and soon. I’ll be whatever you want me to be. If that’s everything: great. If it’s nothing: that’s fine too. I just need you to let me in, if only for a second, so that if you’d like to exchange hearts like we exchanged rocks and origami, I can be ready to grip yours tightly, making sure that it does not get dropped and fall on the ground like your favorite teapot. Because we both know that I’m no good at gluing such things back together.

Sincerely,
Me