Back when I knew you best, I was little and lying in an earthy bed of autumn leaves. I told you I would see you soon, someday, and that I’d write you always. I closed my eyes as the maples made haloes of the sun.
The first time I recognized your smile, you were wearing a "Vote for Pedro" teeshirt in the cafeteria. Your hair had a fringe that curled at the ends and you always ran away during the slow songs. You liked to make me laugh and that little warmth sent me wonder. When you were just him, I pulled all the pink gel pen love notes from my diary and tore them to an angry flurry. I missed you then and sent you my favorite songs on a mix CD that I drew all over with Sharpie flowers, leaving the lines empty, because I couldn’t remember your name. I knew you'd understand.
The second time, it was your strength that I saw. You were a forward on the varsity soccer team and two grades above me. You asked me to prom during AP Biology class and during the summer that you worked cutting grass at the golf course, I told you I loved you. You showed me your hiding places and asked me for mine. When you were just him, I put my corsage in a shoebox and listened to Coldplay for weeks. My roommate asked me to play some happier music. I asked you to hurry. I poured myself into poems as long as I could write, hoping they'd grow far enough from my pen to reach your heart.
The last time, I saw a glimmer of your love, and that little bit of your light was more than enough - I was so sure. I left our first date and told my mom I'd marry you one day. Six years later, I told you the very same thing while my heart screamed to stop. You played guitar in a dive bar band and always made me feel so small. When you were just him, I nearly broke under the weight of what I'd given away to the wrong heart.
So, I wrote to you. I wrote to you every day for years. I begged you to appear. I waited. I looked for you in train stations and coffee shops and on mountainsides. I prayed over the pages of each book that I read, asking if you loved those words, too - though of course, I knew you did.
Tonight, I watched the mountains make haloes of the sun. I wondered at how everything beautiful grows in circles; the seasons shaping tree trunks, the water’s surface breaking beneath stones, the orbits of moons and galaxies, the ring my coffee cup left on the table that morning, that day in the leaves reaching the moment I'll finally know.
I smiled and whispered a question to the space between us.
I waited. I wondered. I wrote to you.