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Dear Alex,
I wanted you
I always wanted you
I write it now because you are too far for me to say it to your face, and I don't think i could forgive myself if i did it on the phone, so i will mail you this letter for a final time.
I have not lived a singular day without you.
I’ve spent months without you, actually, but you never feel as far as you really are. I hold you so close to my heart it nearly aches. It does ache, actually, and I try to not let myself wonder about how you are doing, but we both know I can’t control the way I think of you.
I wish I was brave enough to mail this to you, ‘Al, but I don’t know if I ever will be.
Whenever I die, I hope it is before you, because I cannot imagine a life where I don’t look for you on every street corner and in every tune I hear in a pub or on my record player.
I would still look for you. You know I would.
I’ve never felt it with someone else. I’ve never felt that rising pain in my chest, the pounding in my heart so loud you might hear it even over the sound of our voices mingling together like vines creeping into the cracks of a stone wall. I was sure from the beginning you’d be unlike anybody else, but I never knew how deeply you’d bury yourself into my soul.
If I'd had known we would’ve ended up here, I wouldn’t have shut you out. I would’ve let you crawl into the darkest places inside of my heart even if it ruined everything I had before you, because I never truly had anything at all until we had each other.
I know what we had was real, and I know it may not be real to you anymore, but I will not rest until you know how real it still is to me.
I still want you
I’ll always want you
I’ve never been sure of much besides you. You deserve to know that. I wish I could write everything I love about you here, but I’ve drafted a million copies in my mind and that will have to be enough for now.
If you feel the way I do right now, I would have to scold you for hiding for so long. I wouldn’t be surprised at the hiding part though, you’ve always been good at keeping to yourself.
A few years back you left one of your notebooks on the counter in LA, and I still have it.
You had nearly every page filled, and I always felt guilt for keeping it, but it felt like I had a piece of you.
Even if it was just the crinkled edges of the white paper with smudged ink scribbled across the page, knowing your fingers and mind had worked so hard on it felt like a gift. Everything you’ve ever touched feels like a gift sometimes.
I started painting. Landscapes, mostly.
I’m not very good, but I think if you saw them, you’d say they were good anyway. Usually i’ll paint the city, or the sky, or maybe a park with trees, but more than once the clouds remind me of the way you’d strum the guitar and it becomes a painting of your calloused fingers resting on the edge of a table or maybe brushing my knee the way it used to. The crook of your neck ends up being my inspiration for the tree branches, and your eyes often make their way into the space between the buildings.
It’s sickening, really, how you weave your way into every aspect of my life. I wouldn’t change anything, though. Maybe I’d bring you closer to me, but not much other than that.
Not much else is new. I think of you every day, and you haunt me the way I knew you would, but I can’t find myself hating it as much as I’d hoped.
I miss you, Alex, and I’ve come to terms that not only do I love you, but I’m still in love with you as well. I wouldn’t feel differently if you don’t feel the same. I wouldn’t feel differently no matter what happens, I don’t think.
I will spend the entirety of my life regretting letting us go, alongside grieving the way you felt pressed against me as we slept, and remembering the way you once looked at me.
I won’t forget a single day we spent together; I get so lost reliving them, I forget the days I spend alone.
I wish I could stop feeling this way, wanting to hang onto every bit of you even as you have a new life where I am not a main role in it, but I’ve given up trying to imagine a world where I don’t retrace the lines we drew together. It’s simply not in the equation.
I hope you are well, ‘Al. I hope you know I feel this way, even though this message may never reach you.
Love,
Miles x