my beautiful friend

my phone still remembers your birthday

My gorgeous friend. When we fought for the third and last time, she said she didn’t appreciate it when I lied. She meant how I called her beautiful constantly. She is, to me. She’s stunning. I wish I’d asked her to clarify so I could have told her before we parted that I truly think she’s beautiful. It’s not like I think it matters. I just love her face.

We’d hang out on her grey or cream or white couch, I can’t remember which anymore—but I remember the cool brown smell of her apartment, like oven-baked frozen breadsticks that had been packaged and wrapped with a white woolen bow; I remember the white fuzzy carpet; I remember how she got so cold and loved shrouding herself in the blanket with her knees against her chest. I remember how she loved the movies I hated; the paranormal, the bleak, how I wish I’d asked her, when we were allowed to talk, why she loves them so much. How I wish I hadn’t been 22 and stupid.

We barely fought about anything—we were both gentle, her moreso than me. I ended it over insecurities; I was so opinionated; she was so not; I couldn’t handle her silences or the misunderstandings or her inability to say she cared for me or the fact that she believed some weird fucking girl I met once about that night over me. When we fought for the third and last time, she told me that a couple months after we first met, the first time I was sad around her, she said she loved me and I didn’t hear her and she had to repeat it for me to say it back and ever since then she felt she couldn’t return my affection. She was three years older and that reasoning felt stupid to me.

But I loved her—both of us platonically, but all the same. So I didn’t really give a fuck. I’d welcome her back but I’d have to put up black lace curtains and build a big glass wall between us. She’d have to paint a heart on her lips—I’d give her my midnight purple lipstick, but after three years of talking almost exclusively about horror, I don’t know if she likes vampires—I don’t think she does—and not convince herself she was lying to me, to herself, to the world all the time. I’d have to stitch thread over my mouth and slice open my brain and take anti-anxiety medication.

I’ve thought about her every few days for the last year, yet I know I can’t be around her again. I’ve thought about her longer than I’ve ever thought about a man after a break up. I wonder what she’s doing; I feel like I know. I think she still never got a boyfriend, because despite being so broken down by life, she managed to decenter men before any of us. I think she went to another concert of that famous K-pop group she adores, or watched a single documentary on them at least. I think she read a lot of fantasy and spent many minutes and hours basking in the world-building. I think her dog and her cat are doing fine but they wonder why she’s lonely. I think she searched up that My Strange Addiction video quite a few times the past year to feel less like shit. I think she definitely didn’t smoke and probably didn’t drink and maybe slept a lot less or more than before because she got a second job.

I think it’s weird that I’m writing about her, and I think she’d be confused but secretly it would warm her heart, because we spent every weekend together for two years and I miss her and I wish I didn’t feel so uncomfortable around her and I wish she didn’t feel so alienated from me and I know we’d have to tweak our personalities to be in each others’ lives and then it’s not meant to be but she is beautiful.