9:36 p.m. - January 15, 2002
dear: who will never know
Dear who will never know,
Even though you�ll never know, I�ll always remember you and think about how we should have been fairy lovers in a past life, holding hands and tumbling down waterfalls, breathing in bubbles of each other�s breath to sustain our lungs when we stayed too long under the stinging stream. We should have been the sun and the stars, the twin cities, two road-trippers through the mountains. We should have had the Rockies as our living room sofa, the Great Lakes as our bathtubs, the Pacific our swimming pool. I wonder why I always only think of you and I in water together, floating and dipping our hair in when it got too hot, dripping wet and stretched out in canyons, somehow, magically, far away from the ocean. Maybe we would have created our own water, powered it into existence through wishing on mountain sky stars. We should have been selfish with the stars, scrambling every night to find them and collect them under the folds of our cloaks before the other children of the world got around to wishing on them first, using them up, and leaving us with nothing to bind us together. Because of course, certainly, we couldn�t have done it without some sort of magic.
That selfishness I can see clearly even looking at us now; wrapped up in our own conflicting eyes, oblivious to your mother calling up the stairs; �Dinner-time.� I can feel all that and more through your green eyes filling with tears that night as we lay by the duck pond, my head on your chest, my hand on your hand on your stomach. Your heartbeat told me all these stories; stories of what we should have looked like underwater as fairies, the feel of your skin in summer, the feel of your skin through layers of cotton and fleece in winter.
I wonder about the magic every time I see you and I wonder why it only works its enchantments one way. Maybe, in order to make a togetherness wish on a star, both people have to be doing the wishing. And even through the haze of water droplets and mountaintops and kissing; the rain and snow and sleeping, I know that I did it alone. There are so many things that you�ll never know, and maybe that�s because you were never truly there. When I dream of you, it is a dream-you; if I were to reach out a finger to brush your side, my skin would pass through yours in a blur of rosy dust..... I don�t ever want to see that happen, followed by your inevitable dispersal. I know better than to try and touch you with my eyes open. For our past to be real, for me to be able to start a train of thought with the words �fairy lovers�, my eyes have to be closed. And the sad part about this all being a mere vision is, two people never have the same dream.
I try not to think about things you�ll never know, because it makes me sad. I try not to notice that you don�t notice the things that I notice about us, the things that we should have been. I even try to shelter you from it sometimes, the fear of it dawning in your face, the quick rush to curb it before it goes any farther. I know you don�t want to know what we should have been. You�re still looking for something better. I wish you could have seen us, I wish you could have been there during those times when you tilted my head back under a sparkling sky. I wish you could have been there when we splashed our feet in Niagara Falls. I wish you could remember, even though I can see you don�t want to. I wouldn�t force you, which is why you�ll never know. Just don�t ever try and tell me that being close to you isn�t painful... you�ve never felt that magical rain. You�ll never know.

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