write about someone who used to be in your life that you miss/think about.

I'm digging the topic

dear emily,

i was driving in my car the other day when your favorite band came on the radio and i got to thinking about all the good times that we had. it was then that i started to wonder what you were doing at that very moment.

i'm sorry that i wasn't strong enough to stick around. i told you how i felt, you rejected me, and i didn't know what else to do but leave. this isn't me trying to ask for pity or me trying to tell you that i'm still upset. i don't blame you for making the decision that you did. i know that if i was in your shoes i would have done the same thing but i just can't believe that things had to end up the way they did.

remember the late night talks? staying up til 4am and just laughing about nothing? walking through the snow to get to class? those were all the good times, when you made me feel like i was important to you. we were good friends and i just had to throw that all away. i guess i can't be ashamed of the mistake that i made because at the time i just wasn't strong enough to stick around and try to be friends. it's time like these that i wonder what you're doing and i wonder if anything would have happened if i would have just stuck around.

i know that you're out there somewhere and hopefully you're happy. and if i saw you again i know what i would do. i'd live in the present, forget the past and not worry about the future. life is too short to cut people out of it that make you feel good about yourself.

Jim

Dear Tia,

I remember the reason we decided to expand our relationship from purely professional to personal. I remember the night I drove home as fast as I could to change my clothes in anticipation of our first 'non-work related' date. I wore a pair of jeans and a black shirt, you barely changed. The spontanious hour drive ahead of us seemed like minutes as the conversation flowed with no akwardness. What seemed like a perfect beginning to a perfect relationship was only to be met with flase promises.

You always told me that you didnt want to drink with me because you were afraid of what you might say. You told me that people always told you that you always tell the truth when you are drunk. As sad as that seems, it was true. Im not sure what you were afraid of, or why you couldnt be honest, but I know that during those times you let your guard down and you let your true feelings out. We would, laugh, and even fight, but the next morning you were quick to quiz me on what I remembered, and how you reacted.

I never told you that you said, "I love you" and said it with more truthfulness than anyone else who had ever said the term. I never told you, my response. I never told you of the times I carried you to bed, put the covers over you and kissed your forehead. I never told you of the long moments we would sit there and just stare into eachother's eyes. I never told you how you cried as we would lay there together. I didnt tell you alot of things...

I didnt tell you how it killed me when you went on dates with other people. I didnt tell you how I really felt.

Whether or not that was the cause of the end, Im not sure. Im not sure I forgive what you did, or if there is anything that can mend that, but I want to say that its been over 2 years since weve talked, and everytime I pass your name in my phone I wonder if we will ever talk again. I wonder if will you call. I wonder if you are thinking about me too. I miss you Tia.

Sincerely,
Chris

To true...

great thread Jim.

I miss the old me. Not that the present me is a bad person, but I've been better. I want to extend my hands across oceans of sky; oceans of space; oceans of time; I want to pull myself from my very own past and plant him in my present.

Winds blow and carry my memory to a time where things weren't so difficult, so confusing, so goddamn pessimistic. Death was unfathomable, which made me an immortal gladiator of youth troucing through this world. Love never involved tears and was wholly unconditional to my growing, uncorrupted mind. Friendship bore no more responsibility than merely including my acquaintances in activities as meaningless and trite as they were exciting.

These are dangerous swamps to be treading, I know. But I just want to talk to the old me that I miss so dearly and tell him to just once, for even one second, to capture one of those precious moments and carry it with him. They disappear as fast and as furious as a breath in the fog, and if he could grasp one and preserve it, he'd be preserving the holiest of holies: innocence.

But this is real life, and not a movie. CGI or green screens cannot bring the old Frank back, and there is no editor standing above the celluloid tapestry of my life who can superimpose anything from the past into my future. Instead I have to sit back and watch my life unfold before my eyes, frame by frame.

I suppose the gist of this piece is more about reminiscing than regret. I possess no shame about the person I've become; I just miss the person I used to be allowed to be given the circumstances of my situation. Each day I fight the good fight and try to recapture just a little part of him, and on a few occasions I've even gotten close, but ultimately to no avail. Reality rears her ugly head and everything becomes confusing again.

Not tomorrow, and probably not for some years, but me and the old Frank will meet again in a place called heaven. And everything will be golden again, old buddy.

i miss you, white-boy.
(play that funky music...)
i'm not sure you ever knew
that
in my fourteen year old mind,
you were my world.
i do this because of you-i
write
because i thought it would impress you
(and it never did, because
you never saw it and because
your talent puts any of mine to shame.)
years after we'd last spoken
(emailed last words from you,
which i always remember:
i love you too, but it's latel and i'm tirrrrrrrred.)
i bought a bass
because you played, because you
drummed
the thumping lows into my soul.

but you never knew.

i was just another in a long line of girls
who loved you from afar.
i was, you said, the kid sister you never had,
the ideal person to talk music with,
to read shakespeare on long bus rides
(mistakenly to oklahoma),
to sit, wrapped like burritos in a blanket
and shakos and eyes with pride at football games
because surely, only one of us thought ahead.

i was fourteen, and i wanted something more.
i had girlish fantasies of growing up
and marrying you.

i don't want that now.

i just want you back.
we could coffee shop now on cold winter days,
wrapped in scarves and hats and talk
like we used to:
books, music.
maybe this time, i'd show you,
the carefully kept books of poetry.
i'd show you around, proud,
like the kid sister you never had.

(play that funky music and
lay down the boogie till you die)

I found life nearly impossible to fathom without you

everyday more memories long put away somewhere untouched in my brain bubble up and make me smile then grimace

you said it was all so long ago but it was just a few minutes

I miss you when you're sitting right in front of me now

dear dad

can you see me now?

i am myself

not like you at all

you started to listen

when i stopped talking

now you wait up in the dark

for me to speak to you

this (by deav)
Rio, Mai 2003
(exposed)

just as we’d started
feeling comfortable
in each others arms
putting aside the knowledge
of the parting hour getting by
daring to choose the names
of the children we’d make together
that was sweet
but we had to go

soon there’ll be an ocean between us
it’s sad but soon everything
but the memories,
will fade away, even those,
just until they start to hurt too bad
then they’ll be gone
hope a little bit of them remain
enough to turn into a song or two
in the years to come

think of all the things
that never came to be
we’re all in the hands of fate
if i had just crossed a street
i would have never seen your face
i guess the timing was wrong
maybe it wasn’t meant to be
after all
though it felt so strong
what rises eventually falls
at least we had this
at least we had this
that we had
at least we had this…

hope (by deav)
Rio, Jun 2003
(harvest?)

one minute you were here
the center of my life
though i didn’t think of that all the time
the other you were gone, taken away
i haven't figured out why till today

i regret i took you for granted
watching you grow up
was something so certain
it’s hard to realize
your image is vanishing
your picture tells me
it’s nobody’s fault but mine

sorry it’s been so long
that for an hour or so
i manage to forget you
but then i remember
what it is to walk in the world
with a hole
where there used to be a heart

sometimes i wake up from a dream
where i was holding you again
i just keep on searching
i wonder what keeps me going
it’s hope, just hope

i wonder if all of this will ever be over
the worst thing is not knowing
i confess sometimes
i wish i got bad news
what kind of person have i become?

sorry it’s been so long
that for an hour or so
i manage to forget you
but then i remember
what it is to walk in the world
with a hole where there used to be a heart...

uhm... this is about me, right?

oh my rose
beloved companion in these woods
oh little light
shine on this lake late at night

little rose start drinking
drink all those bittersweet memories
drink the pale white water
drink all the drowning silence

oh my star
did I never let you shine
I was so scared
scared that you could leave my sky

little rose start breathing
breathe in all those regrets
my star keep on shining
on somebody else's lake

oh dear fall
revolve the world around this lake
oh sweet, white water
surround me as I fall asleep

dear m,

every day there was always another day to drop another hint. every time i detoured past your house and didn't stop, i could have. every time i looked in your eyes and diverted my glance because i could feel you walk in through my mind and read everything that i am in an instant, i could have looked back.
i could have stayed when you asked me to instead of running away. when you chased me i could have given in, instead of gazing back with a barely concealed grin. thousands upon thousands of options, of times, of opportunities and i never took any of them.
not even when i went running through the night to your house, drunk as a bum, when i knocked on your door and found myself with nothing to explain my existence. that night i, like every one before and after, wasn't on the right plane, that night i fell asleep.
so you left. you chased the sun. i couldn't follow you.
seeing you again i was wiser. you never left my side. i kissed you goodbye.
i suppose that's it.

Dear Jamaican guy at the Exxon,

We don't see each other much anymore. I hope all is well with you, things could be better I guess. I miss your guzzling pump and deep throated accent. I don't know why we ever crossed paths but there must be some common fabric of our lives. I won't ever forget that time I bought rolling papers and you told me to "watch yourself and be careful". It was also real cool when I found out that you knew another of my friends. This has gotten long and redundant so I will sign off with my best wishes for you and your kind.

Love, J

Dear Caitlyn,

I don't know what it was about you... your everpresent "I know what you're thinking" attitude, the vague scent of lilac that always seemed to permeate from your hair, or the emotions you awakened in me, but you were a "parchy-killer" from day fucking 1. I fell for your wandering, swimming pool eyes and gorgeous tapared hands from the first time I met you in the mail room. I knew something magical and electric transferred from our hands, and I think you did too.

But something happened. It probably started on one of our many walks when you reacted to something I said. The subject is so moot at this point, but the feelings weren't. You slowed down, walked 10 paces behind me and refused to talk to me when I slowed down to meet your increasingly harrowing gaze. Did idle words really have the ability to effect our relationship to such an unbelievably direct way? If you had simply said one word that night, things might have gone in such a different direction and these words would never have met this ultimate end.

I didn't want to believe it until one day you told me everything I had done, thought and said to propagate our love was in vain. It was crazy to me that in one fell swoop you could erase 6 months of feeling, and though I'm not quite sure you could, you tried. You tore a piece of me off with you and carry it with you now. I'll never get it back, though I'm not sure I want it anymore. Perhaps that's what you did to me... I can't know for certain. What I will always know is you, inside. And you are a fraud.

But you've moved on... have a boyfriend of your own now. When I saw you for the first time in 4 months last year and the breeze brought back that scent of lilac again, though it had faded since I first met you, your cheeks were softer, leaner and not nearly as bright as I had remembered, though the way you carried yourself in that haughty, raised-shouldered manner helped me to realize that despite the fact that I don't have "someone" and you do, my life is the one that is in bloom.

I hope you don't fuck with this guy like you fucked with me. For your sake.

-Will