It has been said by authors and artists alike that if a writer falls in love with you, you can never die. I'm here to tell you personally, from experience, that I believe that that is true.
You know, I did fall in love with you. I fell in love with the way that you walked and you talked, and especially with the way that your hair fell over your dark blue eyes when you would read.
You never were aware just how much I loved you. Always preoccupied with fancy drinks and heavy music and sweaty bodies and then, coming home to crackling fires and Charles Dickens. There always were two of you inside of yourself. One of you would smile at me with a foam milk mustache across a wooden coffee table downtown, and the other would be wiping smudged lipstick with the back of your hand behind closed bathroom doors.
I suppose it had occurred to me that I might not have gotten to know you better than the stumbling drunk men that always seemed to persuade their way back to your apartment way too easily. Their passion was the same as mine on the surface, except mine was much more than that. My desire for you was deep and dark and unknown, the discovery of it being both unbelievable and tortuous. You made me want loose change spent on flowers and falling asleep on the couch. Knowing you, discovering who you were, every side of you, was an incredible adventure that left me both breathless and exhausted but still coming back for more. You were rough on the edges and sweet in the middle and you left me amazed and grateful with every moment that I got to experience with you.
I can tell you that those men never woke up in the morning for your smile, and they never thought of you and your jingling laughter when they heard a dumb joke, like I do.
I had a dream about you the other night. I had my fingers tangled in your long red hair, and I couldn't get them out. You didn't even know I was there. But you kept kissing him. And for a long time after I woke up, and for a while after the sinking feeling in my chest faded away, I thought about you, with no idea that I was there. No idea that I couldn't pry my way out of your presence. I wondered where you were then, and if you might have been thinking of me. A large part of me doubted it.
I thought about how you don't even know that I think about you every night before I sleep, knowing that you will never love me too. One of those nights, with the darkness intertwining with my sadness, I remembered how you would read me poems that you wrote about how you wished that you could live forever.
As you read that to me, in a whisper across steaming coffee and bitten muffin tops, I was silent. I never promised you that I could make that happen, as I so wanted to. While you wished for eternity, I wished for you.
I hope that one day you understand that who you are made me who I am. The reason I am successful is because of who you made me in the short moments that we had. I hope that someday you know that I am a writer. You can not die.