Dear

I used to pray for us to be alone, because I envisioned that we'd never run out of things to say. We're both such freaks, such word addicts, so similar yet careening down radically different paths. I used to dream of possiblities floating over our heads, little cartoon-bubble musings matched with cups of coffee.

But on that day, the last day as far as I'm concerned, we sat in a room full of goodbyes and leavings, as filled with last-minute emotion as it could possibly be, and found nothing, nothing on earth, to say.

I remember sitting next to you, so close I thought I could smell your toothpaste, almost touching your knees, and occasionally trying to look into your eyes. That was my way of testing myself to the extreme, because there's nothing like looking someone in the eyes to hold you to the earth. But with you, it was different. Our silence filled me with a warm happiness, like I had swallowed something too hot too fast, and was standing outside, wrapped up and comfortable on a snowy day.

And either way, either way or both ways, we'd still be friends, you in college and me not far behind. You driving and me forever standing, watching you leave, marveling at how close we are yet so unfathomably different.