hi, how are you?

a letter to a friend

The red string of fate is simply not possible, not until I catch a glimpse of it tied to your finger.

It was just a test of faith, perhaps a light joke that the gods (which I now realize are probably real) took as a challenge.

I don’t even know if you remember me still.

I don’t know if you’ve forgotten about my favorite color, or the show I told you that I liked, or the artist that shaped my early teens, as well as the genre of movies that I always watch.

I don’t even know if you remember my name, or the letter that it starts with. I don’t know if you remember me at all.

But it kills me just a little to confess that I count your birthdays as much as how I count my electricity bills.

The first few days were antagonizing. You were everywhere my eyes planned to set. You were on the car, the classroom board, the reflection on mall doors, the blurry images of people passing on rush hour, and on the writing that you left- scribbled in my notebook that I now keep under my bed.

The next few weeks were tolerable. I would still get reminded of your preferred flavor when I eat ice cream. still would feel a pang on my chest when I stumble upon the selfies I took. still would often wonder if my voice had cross your mind on the days when my own can’t stop to think about yours.

For the first few months I managed to move on with my life, accepting the reality that we’ll never see each other again and that it’s better this way. I hadn’t stopped thinking of you, but the times that I did, it only happened when i was blue.

After a few years I caught myself rarely thinking about you at all. It made me a little sadder realizing that for a few years more I wouldn’t even be aware of how I wasn’t thinking of you anymore.

But maybe fate is a little fucked up for letting our paths cross. You wore that striped shirt covered with a coat, scarf around your neck and hair slightly messed. The red string bracelet I gifted wasn’t on your wrist, it probably broke so now it sits atop the finger on your left.

How long has it been since you left? Five years? Six? Or is it eight?

You said you didn’t have hopes on growing taller than a hundred and sixty seven but there you were, at least taller than most gentlemen who tried to take me home.

Hey, Saiki. Did you ever become a police like you wanted? Or did you change your mind like I did?

Before your flight back to Japan I had ranted to a friend about how missing you will only be temporary.

I was wrong.

Missing you isn’t temporary, it’s inconsistent.

Should I have stopped to greet you and say that we’re old-time friends? Would you have recognized me in the new skin of a person that I changed?

I was too scared to admit that rejection stings harder than hearing you say “hi, how you’ve been!”

I keep wishing on the stars that you keep our photos in your gallery, because I have kept ours in a separate album despite almost all of them being blurred. Your good-bye letter was framed and I still read it sometimes before going to bed.

I keep wishing that you wouldn’t forget. But our eyes locked and you didn’t even look back.

So here I am, writing this as a sort of closure to end this insufferable hatred that I have for the world. hoping this feeling of longing and disappointment will fade like bubbles popping after being touched by fingertips.

And I know that this is random, but really- all I wanted to ask was how you were.

❏

the recipient’s address is somewhere in Osaka, Japan. there’s also a polariod inside the envelop- a picture of a young girl and boy, both faces were shown to be smiling as their eyes twinkled just a little for the camera.

underneath them were words written in black, permanent marker:

“𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱 2009”