It's been 364 days since we collapsed, a popsicle stick tower in science class shaken by a breath I never saw coming.
I should be over you and me.
I'm not.
I have a new best friend who loves me in ways you never learned how to, soft where you were sharp.
Yet I still miss you.
You poured love into me even when I was empty, all bone and shadow on the inside.
You answered every text, picked up every call, as if connection itself could keep us from breaking.
You listened when I spoke. You made me feel like I was worth the space I took up.
I don't blame you.
You believed an adult over me, and the world taught you that adults never lie the way children do.
I understand. I really do.
I never lied, but the idea that I might have sliced through you cleaner than any truth I could have told.
I am so, so sorry I hurt you.
I know you hate me now, or at least it’s easier for you if you do.
I know you resent that I befriended your sister, that my laughter still lives in your life even if I don't.
I understand. I would probably hate me, too, from where you’re standing.
I do not hate you. I couldn't, even if I tried.
I wish we could still be friends, two kids in McIntyre's again, building something fragile and calling it forever.
But we aren’t in that classroom anymore. There’s no teacher with hot glue and extra sticks, no tidy rubric for how to rebuild what cracked along the fault line of belief.
So I carry us like your old Christmas letter signed "Crayola", folded and hidden in my closet— all bone and shadow, proof that once you saw straight through me and still chose to stay.
The ache has blurred at the edges. But I know it will always hurt, deep inside me.
Maybe one day I will give you the letter I wrote. Maybe one day I can burn it, letting myself free.
Until then, I will keep learning how to stand without your hand in mine, how to build new towers out of sturdier things than almost and maybe—
When I pass you in the halls, I’ll let myself remember that for a little while, we really thought it would hold.
Love,
Your ex-best friend.