Unrequited

Dear Sawyer,

I’ve never realized how much you’re like the moon: beautiful, mysterious, so close, but so far away. I can stare from afar but will never be able to reach you. Should I find hope because Apollo 13 reached the moon successfully? Do I have to crash and burn twelve times before loving you? If you say yes, then I will plummet into nothingness twelve times just to feel your love on the thirteenth.

I’m not trying to be pretentious. Beyond the time that I push pencil against paper in little, black books and random notebooks you’ve bought me, I’m not suave. I’m definitely not charming. I prefer sarcasm to pointless whining. I’d rather sit by myself than argue about which pop star is the better one-hit wonder. I’m the complete opposite of you.

You tell me everything. I hide my thoughts in the depths of my mind, but if someone was strong enough to navigate through the chaos, they’d realize anything of purpose in there is about you. That’s because I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you.

We were twelve; My mom had just won $20,000, enough to move us from the southside of Newark to the blinding suburbia you grew up in. I remember thinking that moving was the worst thing that could happen to me, and then I saw you. You were playing in your front yard. Despite the dangers of talking to strangers, you ran towards my mom and me and introduced yourself.

The sun reflected off your bronze skin and tangled itself in your hair. Even at that young age, I knew something was different about you. I was lost in your hazel eyes and heart-shaped lips that were always pulled into a smile. I didn’t tell you then—I was only twelve; I was kind of afraid of you, and I didn’t want to lose my first friend—but I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

I would never tell you any of this, though. I let my pride outweigh my emotions. I listen to my ego instead of my heart. Testosterone clouds any coherent thought I may have and keeps me quiet. Instead, I confide my deepest feelings to a pen and allow truths that I won’t verbalize bleed into pieces of paper.

Little black books are all we have: small snippets of my emotions that I spill on pages that will never be reciprocated. I shouldn’t complain. Without these pages, my love would become a black hole that would consume my entire being. But I wonder why I can only daydream about loving you.

Do you remember when we were fifteen? We went to the Fourth Street Carnival. We ripped a page out of my journal and made a fortune teller: every flap was a different ride or food to try. We let luck decide what our night looked like. Despite clear sugar overload and possible food poisoning, we laughed. Why isn’t every day like that?

Why is the admission of love concentrated to moments that only exist between me and pages that can never talk back? If I rip pages from the spine, will you act each one out? Laughter? Happiness? Love? Step on each one and transport yourself to my side where my love resides. I guess, you can’t because I can’t.

I never mail them or walk across the stretch of grass that separates your house from mine. But if I was strong, I’d sweep you into my arms and tell you that I loved you more than air. I’d kiss you until you believed that there wasn’t anyone else in the world meant for you. Because there isn’t. Perhaps some time in the future we’ll start dating, and I’ll give them to you then. Maybe one day you’ll say, “I love you, Logan,” and I’ll say, “I’ve loved you forever. I wrote to you before you even knew it.”

Love,

Logan