My Dead Letter to You

To the boy that found me when we needed each other most,

A week ago I was begging you to come see me in my dreams. Come give me the last goodbye I never got while you were still here. As the days went on I kept wondering why I hadn’t seen you, why you evaded my pleas. And then when I had almost given up on calling for you, there you were.

You in that outfit, the last one I saw you in, that had grown to fit you so well, and that big stupid smile that would light up a room. You stood before me with a smile on your face and arms open but instead of your eyes shining with their usual ease they were filled with tears on the verge of spilling over.

I threw myself into you, taking in the smell of your clothes and skin, holding on to your sturdy structure hoping that maybe, just maybe, if I squoze you enough I could pull you back to my side. But instead you held me tight, grounding my body like you always had, stroking my hair and letting a tear slip down your face as mine collected on the front of your shirt. I cried to you telling you how much I miss you, and how I still need you, asking if you could stay and never leave me again because the weight of your absence has blown a hole right through me, a hole that may forever be rendered vacant. I told you how much I loved you.

And as I cried and begged, you only stared at me with a gentle gaze and a soft smile on your lips, and you said, “I know, and I'm sorry. But I promise I will never really leave you. I love you, and it's okay”. I allowed that dream to carry me away, convincing myself you were not really gone and that your death was nothing but a dream.

Yet when I woke up full of joy and peace, ready to call you, I remembered with a sharp pain, that you being gone wasn't the dream, It was me getting to see you one last time that was.

A boy that lived so close to me my whole life, constantly circling around my orbit, only one rotation from the sun away. Then I found you in the woods the day our orbits finally aligned. And in finding you, I found a friend, a major supporter, an ally, a shoulder that was strong and never gave way, a big younger brother I always needed, and someone that I would mourn with all of the intensity and force in which I loved them.

If you would have told me that day when I showed you the smoke spot or layed on the basketball court with you, that in only a few short months, I would fall in love with you in the least romantic way possible, and then lose you I would have laughed and told you that you were being dramatic.

How could I have known? And now as I sit on the other side of losing you I feel grateful to have known you, grateful for every fucking moment I got to share with you, every glimps of your soul, every story from your past, every time we’d cry and laugh and when we would cry laughing and laugh crying. I am grateful.

I would tell you now how you changed my life. How you inspired me to live life to its fullest and then some, I would tell you how I will spend forever missing those moments of chaos that came with the whirlwind of you, but also how I wouldn't take them all back to stop the pain your absence has brought me. Because all of this that I now carry is how I know I loved you, because losing you has been the weight I never thought I could carry.

And now I will fight, fight to push myself to do all the things you believed I could, and to live the life I know you would want me to for me, because you always wanted me to achieve every dream I had.

And while you will no longer be able to walk through my front door 20 years from now, and drink beers with me while our lives merge in the background, and we talk about when we were young, dumb and, stupid like we had discussed in that parking lot that one day, I will always be ready to have you fall back into my orbit because at the end of the day, you are just the star boy that couldn't wait to meet the sky.

I love you Mikayle, and until I can be close to you again, I will be strong for there is much to suffer.

With love, that one girl you met at summer camp that one time.