I miss you.

You didn’t go anywhere, but yet you are so far away.

With an outstretched hand, my fingertips can only splay out

And brush the silken memories you have gifted me for but a brief moment.

But the wavering string that ties our existences together, now frayed,

Is fading within the fog that you approach.

I have known you since nine years old,

You shone so brightly.

Your hands would clutch a pencil like you would a lifeline.

You doodled on the pages of the canvas paper twirled along spirals of the sketchbooks that resided on your desk at all times.

I missed you eagerly showing me your art.

But everything you would say had an edge to it.

The words you would speak with such lovely context would slowly begin to dip down into an abyss.

You would tell me about your recurring nightmares,

And how gruesome they were, 

You always had darkness whispering into the depths of your mind,

I always sensed it.

I missed when you confided in me.

As time passed, we drifted.

But when we did interact, you came to me crying, needing someone to listen.

Every day you would feel your stomach twist into knots like a beast trying to claw its way out.

You would retch out the anxiety that polluted your insides,

To the point where the hinge of your jaw would come loose.

Your mind grabbed hold of your wrist and you couldn’t shake free as it dragged you into the gloom where any light you possessed was doused.

I missed the way you relied on me.

Your light was fading more and more by the day

As you told me you hate your body,

You hate your art,

You hate yourself,

You hate the voices that would shriek inside your skull,

And you hated that you listened to them.

I missed your light.

After years of never once seeing one another, we did.

It was like no time passed.

We laid upon your pullout mattress and rambled about what we hated about the world.

We laughed and cried like we used to back then.

You told me how in the time we spent apart you tried to end your life and spent months in a mental institution,

How those who  you thought were your friends, told everyone why you were gone for so long for attention,

How kids added you to a group chat, and sent pictures of you, and made fun of them just so you could watch in humiliation.

I should have been there.

That small moment in my life was one of the most comforting,

Because you probably don’t realize how much you have always meant to me,

And you were almost taken from this world without me having known.

I almost missed you.

I know you are still at war with your mind as you choke down prescription pills to tame your brain as you sit alone in your room,

Wearing your cottagecore cardigans, 

Surrounded by walls strung with withering roses,

Your tears acrylics that would color the canvas in pale pastels upon the easel in the corner of your room,

Producing masterpiece after masterpiece with each droplet.

I miss you.

You believe people will only spend time with you out of pity.

That’s not true.

With every fiber of my being, I miss you.

I miss your laugh and our dumb inside jokes,

I miss watching anime with you, and drawing together while listening to Mitski,

I miss you for everything you hate about yourself.

I miss you.