Not every day,
but I think of you—
who ghosted me,
ghosted but not blocked.
Long I called across the bridges
of all the apps we had—still have—in common,
before I accepted
there would be no response.
I see a post and I want to send it to you
like a cat bringing you a mouse,
but this cat now turns away,
for it knows the offering will lay where it was put,
rotting until it is
nothing but bones and
nothing but dust and
nothing
at
all.
Your presence haunts my online haunts,
I open my chats and the friends list tells me you're online.
"Your friend is just a message away!" it seems to say,
when it's been years since we could last be deemed
anything resembling such.
I scroll through posts, go to share one of them,
and the app suggests sharing with you.
"Won't you share this post with user [redacted]?"
Of course I won't.
It's been too long.
It would be disappointing to get no response.
But the alternatives are worse.
What if this is when you remember to block me?
More horrid still, what if you respond?
What if this is the moment I discover that all those years ago,
I committed some grave crime
that hurt you,
that I had never realized?
We met near a decade ago.
We are no longer the children we were.
But as I scroll through your reblogs
I see that our interests,
though long developing independently,
even now would intersect.
We might become friends, I think,
if we were to meet for the first time today.
Is it unfortunate that it is not so?
You once had a friend. I still remember her name
upon your lips. Your friendship was wonderful,
your romance more so. Then she vanished.
"I will always write back," to you I then pledged,
thinking that although we were mere friends,
I would never put you through that.
I never imagined that the one who would never write back
would be you.
"I love you (platonically)," I'd pen
in my hand-written letters,
thinking in my mind, that the addendum would somehow
prevent us from going down the same path,
that of you, and of her.
I wonder if that's what drove you away.
Internalized homophobia that I couldn't then see,
coming from the "token straight friend"
that turned out to be a gay-ass bitch—what irony.
I wonder if the realization hit you with a delay,
and that's when you decided to turn away.
Or maybe it wasn't that.
Maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was nothing.
Maybe it was life.
But what kills is the not knowing.
You're still online as I write this.
Will you see these lines as I post them?
Platonically?
Is that even a word?
Does it matter?
Does it matter the how when the fact is
I loved you?
My letters did not lie.
I loved you.
And for that, I carry a hole in my heart
in the shape of your smile
and with the sound of your laugh,
or rather the memories
of the memories
of you.
I'm re-reading the letters you wrote me.
I'm crying, now.
"I wouldn't lose you as a friend for the world,"
you wrote
when you wished me a 'Happy Birthday'
seven years ago.
"Je t'aime," you signed it,
so you could tell your French teacher
that the letter was actually practice for class.
I believe you meant it.
There's much that I don't remember
From all those years ago.
It's possible my memories have warped,
but I'm choosing to trust in the words
that I still have, and can hold in my hands.
You said I pulled you out of darkness.
In the years since, I hope you stayed in the light
even without me.
I see bits of you
in the people I've befriended
since the time we parted.
You opened my eyes to new worlds,
but none of the inhabitants of those worlds
are you.
No one could ever be you.
I kept messaging you,
long after you stopped replying.
After all, there were difficult years.
There were difficult times.
I remain heavy-handed with my benefit of the doubt.
But eventually, I got the message.
Eventually, I felt pathetic whenever I typed up a draft.
Eventually, I began to fear
that I was a nuisance, a creep,
for thinking of you when you so clearly
no longer thought of me.
Still.
There are days when I can't but remember.
There are days when I can't help but mourn.
You’re online, blinks your status, and taunts me.
Then my heart must remember—it’s torn.
