P.S.

The truth is, though, that I miss you.

I admit that it isn't constant; most days you're relegated to the role of someone who shaped me, my first big-kid crush, the boy of the worms and the rocks.

Most days you're stories—crucial, vital, critical stories, but ones pushed so far back they're practically fiction.

But most days aren't today.

We all have the right to irrational wishes, and were I to share mine with you, I’d tell you that in this moment, I want nothing more than to look up into my mirror and see your reflection next to mine: me with my notepad, you with your guitar; your hands manipulating strings as mine coax words out of pen and paper.

We act separately, but we're bridged by proximity, connection, history—it's normal that you're next to me, understood that we're linked, remembered what we've done.

In the dream you catch my eye and exchange your smile for my own, and the longing, by definition, is erased. How can you long for what you already have?

*

Outside the reverie, I’m back at the lake, clutching your wrist as we walk along the rocks that jut out into the water. We're 18 again and I'm terrified.

I tell you that I always was. Ever since I was a little girl. The rocks were too uneven, too high; the water around them was too deep.

I'd watch from the sand as kids braver than me, my brothers among them, climbed deftly, fearlessly over the rocks, never falling or stumbling or losing balance. And I, from 2 to 18, stood to the side, certain I'd be the one fatal exception.

But there was doubt in the mix that night, because that night, I had something that I’d always lacked.

It's not that I was newly reckless or fearless or coordinated. It’s not that I suddenly had the courage within me to climb out above the water.

I just had you.

I can't say that you took my terror and rendered it null (I stood, but petrified), but you took it and rendered it irrelevant (I was petrified, but I stood).

In all mystery and simplicity, the fact of you trumped the fact of fear.

*

It’s on the other side of the lake that I’m writing this. We’re not together—not in my city apartment, not on the rocks of Lake Michigan.

Out of foolishness or sentimentality or insanity, I’m just trading a daydream for a memory. Just one reverie for another.

But if I can dream, if I can remember, you’ll stay my first big-kid crush, the boy of worms and walks and rocks.

You’ll stay someone who shaped me, not someone I’ve let go.

The truth is, then, that I miss you.