Dear Friend:

I miss you more than I can bear. It feels like I have heartburn from eating too much spice…all the time…but I know it’s just heart ache from missing you. You may be miles away and the possibility of being together, parallel universes and light years apart…but I can’t stop thinking about you, about the times we spent together. Our time together was brief but perhaps it’s better that way; I remember every detail about the moments we spent together…remember verbatim the jokes you told me, the stories, everything. And I can’t help replaying these memories…on the train, in class, while I’m supposed to be studying. I can’t listen to Pandora anymore because every song is about love and every song reminds me of you.

We live in worlds apart and that’s the problem with summer…trips and internships bring you into different worlds that just seem to be detours on the way to real life. But I must admit, I’d leave everything behind to be with you if you cared more…and perhaps if in this day and age, it wouldn’t be ridiculous and foolhardy. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m still so stuck in summer. Thinking about you has been so much wasted time…so distracting for my studies when it’s most important. And besides, it’s been months since we had a real conversation. I should be mad at you but I can’t help but think how well we click, how perfect I think you are for me. It’s funny though because I never believed in Romeo and Juliet, in love at first glance, or in soul mates. Now my heart aches because we would have been amazing together. But really, I should be so mad at you. Mad for telling me you liked me…it would have never occurred to me to be something other than friends if you hadn’t. Mad for telling me when there was nothing either of us could really do about it. Mad for leading me on…when were you going to tell me that you got back with your ex-girlfriend? Mad for telling me you liked me…when it seems like you want to marry your girlfriend. Mad because you are getting in the way of me leading my life…you are so much wasted time.

We are just friends now…and I hate that we are still friends, that you still talk to me, though always briefly. I think it keeps me hoping that someday we might be together…but even if that impossibility occurs, a relationship with you will be fraught with its own thorns (hello ex-girlfriends!...why do you have so goddam many?). But I hate the idea of losing you as a friend even more because let's face it, you are good one. So I am still friends with you, hoping and praying everyday that I think of you a little less every day. I know it will happen. I know one day, I will look at you as just a friend, really, sincerely, genuinely. But right now, I miss you and want you, and I can’t help thinking to myself…goddamit, we could be so sublimely happy together.

I miss you, I miss you. I miss you. And I am still stuck in summer.

XX