Open letter - ne me quitte pas

Now, I hate this line of words between us. So cold, so distant, always not enough to tell a story. And so you and I are forced to fill in the gaps with imagined scenes, with fabrications. We say hello much too cheerily to compensate for the growing distance. You put too many emoticons in your chat messages -- another smiley face instead of a sad one. We both think that it’s enough, that the other won’t see anyway, that the other won’t feel that we’re drifting apart. Maybe these words don’t really connect us at all. They've begun to become a wall instead.

I've always wondered if it was fate or mere coincidence that brought us together. We began (at least I did) with an apology. We then wove our story with lines of poetry, a whole new world strung together with words, always words. I loved them, and so did you – was that all?

What was it like, from your point of view?

It was true I never saw you since I left. Out of sight, out of mind. To see is to believe. But you were always real for me, even without us seeing each other. It was as if you were transmuted into those words that floated between us. I was happy to send my thoughts floating toward you too.

Floating free. Floating, nothing to ground it. Was it only believing that made you real?

In my fairy tale, you were the knight who came charging to rescue me. You were the shy guy who unwittingly makes me smile. You were the song I'd “heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”

In yours, who am I? A name, or a number – a face and a voice? Was it chance, or meant to be?

Ne me quitte pas, mon chere. Truthfully, it feels bad to start our tale with a sorry and end with a hello.