when i think of you, i remember sledding in the woods on the lids of garbage cans, splitting our fingers open. i think about the mirror we covered up when we watched a horror movie, how we weren’t scared of anything until it was next to us. i think about how you weren’t a catalyst, you weren’t a pair of hands, you were just someone i loved. just in a good way. after all this time, there’s nothing bad attached.

there’s nothing bad attached but there’s nothing to grieve either. i don’t know if i miss you (i do. of course i do), i think our time came and passed and that’s the whole story. that doesn’t make it less beautiful. you didn’t throw me away, you didn’t forget to empty the pockets. sometimes the tide rises and falls and some parts of the beach don’t touch the ocean again until it storms.

sometimes i hope it does, that weather puts us in the same tide pool one last time. we knew each other like water knows water, like a ridge in the dirt knows a ridge in the dirt, like a person knows a person. we hurt each other because we don’t know everything, we really don’t know much at all. but i thought you should know i’d catch you before you hit the ground and jump before you hit the water, and you don’t have to do the same. you were just someone i loved.