i meant to write sooner, but you remember me - my replies would come back to you months after you'd forgotten you'd even written to me.

what a relief this must be, to you.

remember last year at this time, when things were so unreal, when i dug the YOU out of every day and threw the rest away. what a waste of life, but what a way to pass time, and look at me now. have i gotten anywhere?

you tried many times to write me a real letter, for to send in the mail, and ended up so occupied with the finality and formality of it that you couldn't ever get it done. and one night when you were sitting on your friend's couch and i was so quiet among strangers, you pulled a half-written letter, pencil-smudged with age and disuse, out of your pocket and handed it to me.

it didn't hold a candle to your emails, the way your words spilled over themselves and then stopped to look back at their disorder in disgust, ending in apology (this made no sense) and reparation (i like you, i'm thinking about you). sending me off to dreamland, sending me off to daily life, with a warmth surrounding me and keeping reality out.

presently i seek real warmth and i don't hang on to words that need offer regrets over their own uselessness. i hung on to them so tightly, and they faded so quickly, as all words do, i suppose, and i was lost without anything more solid to follow.

but i re-read one of your old paragraphs, today, and laughed at the way your mind worked. so funny! i miss being your friend.