Dear .......

Today I happened to look at a slideshow picture of the latest fires in Malibu. The hills were burning. This picture is of the tree we sat under when we discussed the terms of our relationship back then. Do you remember the tree? On the campus of Pepperdine University, with the sea wind blowing in our hair and the sun going down in a ball of fire into the ocean? The short grass was a rough carpet under our feet as we sat on a stone bench and you tried to tell me what you were all about, what defined you as a person, at least at that moment in time.

I was dazzled, by the California air and the beauty of the place, and the beauty of your face and your eyes as we talked for an hour or more. I remember feeling free, light as a bird, like I could fly anywhere as long as it was by your side. The world seemed full of possibilities and I knew that nothing could disturb us; nothing would change how we felt about each other at that precise moment. I thought it would always be you and me, tied inexplicably together, something in our souls merging and joining in friendship and harmony.

We were so young. That night I attended your dance performance. I watched your creations moving along the stage, violets and cyans and brilliant blood reds playing on the dancers’ bodies, in rhythm to the music throbbing throughout the theatre. I watched you at the board, orchestrating, your eyes full of passion for your one and only true love. It was a world for which you were born; the theatre is a world made to be carefully wrought, no mistakes permitted, only beauty and light and drama that gets wrapped up neatly at the end and leaves you to think but with none of the messy aftereffects of real life drama. We both loved it but you were the only one able to live in it.

Now, of course, we are not nearly so close. We move in different orbits, separated by so much time and distance that our previous lives seem like a dream, at least to me. Deep inside me, though, I still long for those days when everything was so complicated on the surface, and now I see that it was so simple. I thought all I had to do was dream big and I would make it to the stars, that nothing would ever change and that friends stayed friends forever and the world turned exactly as I thought it should. How naïve. The world changes by the minute, and we are the casualties.

You still live in my heart. I’ve always known it but stumbling across this picture was like a sucker-punch to the soul. I’d know that tree anywhere, and the setting, and looking at it makes me realize that we are not so very far away from those March days that seemed so full of possibilities. You just knew even then who you were, and I had no idea who I was, and here we are. You still know who you are and I still search for me.