There you are.

I can imagine a life with you. Your hand in mine, eyes smiling up, trusting, feeling safe. Your cheeks. Every inch.

It’s a strange and terrible power to have, the one which will ensure that this life, the could-have-been life—imagined and considered and ultimately rejected—will never happen. Not for me, for us, for you. You, who will become nothing. You, who will never smile or swim or breathe or fall crazily, hopelessly, deliriously in love and be forever changed as a result. You, my darling.

And him. He will never know how real you are and were and almost were (could have been, should have been, might have been). I won’t tell him and I know that that’s unfair, I know that it’s selfish. But I will keep you for myself, now/forever/always, long after you’re gone. I will hold onto you, to you and me, to your hand in mine, and to the love that was activated like thunder, as if it had been there my whole life, growing and solidifying and just waiting to bloom, now rushing in like the ocean.

And I know. I know that this sounds counter and arrogant and maybe (possibly, probably) even cruel given what I’m about to do but I will tell you this so that you know it, even if you don’t believe it: I love you. With all that I am or ever could be, I love you. Everything has led to you, to you and this imagined life that I have decided I do not want.

I will do this. And it’s neither selfish nor selfless, shortsighted nor imbued with perspective, fear based nor wise. It’s just a choice. My choice. And for a thousand reasons that I will probably never be able to express or understand, I will go through with it, despite the horrifying, paralyzing, screaming ache, despite the doubt and the anticipation of doubt, and most of all despite the part of me, a thousand years old and carved into every cell of my body, that rises up in your defense and roars. I will end what little you are and in doing so everything you could have become if only I had let you. It will be my choice and mine only, and I will live with it in the place beside me where you would have been.

I will think of you, and pray for you though I do not pray and would not know where to begin/middle/end. I will keep safe whatever part of you you don’t take back.

You who I choose never to know.

You with your hand in mine.

You with your eyes smiling up.

You, my darling.

You.

Hi. So I did some Facebook stalking yesterday, which for you requires both stealth and commitment since basically everything on your page is blocked as a result of your anti-FB vow (or whatever). I looked at your sisters’ pages, Darren’s page, and Luke’s page. (Like I said, commitment.) The boys weren’t much help but the sisters’ photos turned out to be very compelling. First of all you are adorable. The shorter hair, the glasses, the V-necks… Good choices. Okay, great choices. You look tan and happy and calmcenteredsteady, and even though my stomach didn’t do flip flips like it used to, seeing you was like oxygen. I saw photos of you with a girl at a concert, she beautiful, natural, an artist maybe, leaning back into you with her eyes closed and a smile on her face, and then with another, this one fun and fearless and always in the sunshine, your arm draped around her shoulder, fingers intertwined loosely with hers. I looked at this last one for a long while, this photo of you and a girl my age. Your hands. Your fingers. It’s hard to explain the jealously, a marker of all the things I like to believe are long faded. This, I said to myself when I was thinking about it again this morning, is why you can’t be friends with him. Because that pang, that ache, that longing will never go away. I may forget it for a second or a minute or a month or six but it will never not be there. It lingers, just below the surface, a layer like skin. And that’s fine. It just helps to have a reminder every now and then—like fingers laced together and bodies leaning in—that I am not your friend. Never was.

You were standing across from me on that walkway, dressed up in your nice clothes. You had inched back so that your heels extended past the edge of the concrete, which pushed you all snug like into the bush behind you. You looked ridiculous. I laughed and you told me your feet hurt (your nice shoes), which only made me laugh more. And that was it, the moment. It was adorable and I melted. I melted into you more than I already was (this in spite of all my denials and evasions and reasons why not), and I stayed there until the night we were finally together, and through it, and on into the day and night after, and all the way until now and probably still beyond it. And the moments where I was nervous or awkward or defensive was all just being scared. Of looking stupid, of not being experienced enough or pretty enough or blah blah blah/this that and the other/x y and z enough. Of wanting you so much and you not wanting me back.

Now I’m six thousand something miles away and you’re still right there. Heels in the dirt, hands in your pockets, smile on your face. And me, all melty before you.