“Carter.
It’s Tuesday. Three days since you left. It’s been 72 hours of anguish.
I’m laying awake at approximately 3:15 A.M., the same time you first told me you loved me. We were sitting on my roof, the part that extends from my bedroom window, the oak tree’s canopy draped over us, creating our own universe. I remember laying next to you, looking at all the constellations and creating my own amongst the freckles lining your skin. You’d turn your head towards me and tell me I held an entire universe within my eyes. I remember laughing, telling you they were just a simple shade of brown, but you replied with saying my eyes were your favorite color. We just laid there, amongst the crickets and soft hum of the summer wind. You told me you loved me, and in that moment, I loved you too.
I remember driving aimlessly with you in your mom’s old Honda Odyssey when the world was asleep, taking lefts when the penny was heads and a right when it was tails. I remember we once ended up in that open field, across from the pumpkin patch. The street lights were iridescent and our fragile skin glowed. You grabbed my hand and we ran around in the knee high dried greenery for what seemed like forever, but not long enough. I ended up with weeds in my hair and dirt patterns across on my jeans. You looked over at me, ran off, and then came back with a ridiculously large dandelion, crowning me “queen of the field”. I didn’t have the heart to tell you the seemingly harmless plant was a weed. It seems you didn’t have the heart to tell me you could be a dandelion, either. My sweater still smells of earth and your cologne.
I remember dancing with you in the refrigerator light around your kitchen, as if we were on the most grand stage and our heartbeats were the symphony. You twirled me around and lifted me off the counter as I plied and piqued around the table. We didn’t even think about what came next; it all happened naturally. We were like the beautiful pair of dancers in my old jewelry box; fitting seamlessly in each other’s arms, dancing to the sound of our voices. I must’ve been too focused on your heartbeat and the way your hair blew around from the breeze of the ceiling fan to comprehend the words you were saying.
I’m now sitting on my roof, alone. I can see the moon through the canopy of leaves that used to shield us from the world. It’s the same one Shakespeare wrote of and Armstrong dreamed of landing upon. It’s the same moon you sang to me under, humming sweet lullabies and serenading me with your own compositions. It’s the same moon we fell in love under, and the same one under which we fell out.
I don’t think I’ll ever work up the nerve to give this to you. It’ll probably settle in the bottom right hand drawer of my desk, where all flightless paper airplanes lay to rest.
I just hope that somewhere, in some parallel universe we dreamt up, there are two people exactly like you and me who made entirely different choices and ended up together. That’s enough for me. I just wish they were us.”
Porcelain Prose 
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