In the end, I never did get to kiss you. I don’t recall at this late hour the other regrets I might have had. Perhaps to drive a car? Maybe not being able to see a specific movie or television show? But the one true regret I have is the kiss which never was.

I was going to confess. When you returned from the trip to your grandmother’s house after winter break. I was going to walk across the bridge with you, leading away from school toward the center of town and stop. I was going to stare into your eyes and tell you that I love you, far more than a friend should or ever has loved another. I was going to lay my heart bare and hold it out in the hopes you would accept it and keep it safe and warm for me in the book bag of your own requited feelings.

I wasn’t sure if you would accept my feelings, of course. I agonized over the possibility you would disregard my confession. I would sway drunkenly between certainty you loved me in return and terror you would find my feelings disgusting and repugnant and I would lose you forever. It was a great risk.

If you rejected me, I would have been devastated. I would have lost the very center of me if you had turned away. But the possibility the clear river beneath the bridge would reflect our first kiss was too much of a temptation to resist.

Of course, that never happened.

A storm, a spark, smoke and then fire ended everything.

You used to come here often. I would watch with tears in my eyes as your lips quivered while talking in hushed tones to the silent stone marking where my body slept. I would reach for you in an attempt to comfort you and once or twice it felt I’d almost touched you once again, but the feeling was a lie and each time you would slowly stand and walk back along the winding paths and through the gate where I cannot follow, and my touch would be as inconsequential as morning dew on a rose halfway across the world.

My fingers remembered the warmth of your skin, even if my mind had forgotten. My hands remembered the heat of your palm as we held hands walking home. My muscles remembered your hand closing around mine. My ears recalled the sound of your laughter, my eyes the twitch of your lips when you smiled. All of these disparate, yet intricately interwoven things I remembered, even if the whole faded over time, I still had these small parts.

You don’t come any longer.

I can see the town from where I stay and if I strain my eyes and the light is perfect, I can see the chimney of your house. I recall the building as if I were still standing in front of it. The curtains in the windows were a reserved pale blue, contrasting the dark brown wood of the siding. The door was white. Your room. Your books and your movies lying haphazardly everywhere. Your constant promises to clean it up “the next time”. Your smell permeated everything. The sweet scent of lavender and vanilla and cinnamon gum.

Ten years is long when time can still touch you and though they mean nothing to me, they have undoubtedly changed you, I’m sure. You have grown up. You have moved on. High school has come and gone. Are you in college? Did you, maybe, graduate early? Have you skipped as you always threatened to do, and gone into the work force? Are you traveling the world like you wanted or did you find somewhere to settle down? Did you find someone to settle down with? Are you a proud parent of a rambunctious child which looks out at the world with the same wonder I always stared at you with?

I know it’s selfish to hold on to these feelings. It was a third of my life, four years, that I was with you. Four springs, four summers, four winters and three and a half autumns we spent together. You were my first friend. My first confidant. My first and final love. Even if it is selfish, these memories I visit in the dark comfort me. I hope you will forgive me for this trespass, if trespass it is, because I miss you and feel I need these fragments I can keep close because I’m scared.

Even after so long I’m still so afraid. The nights are long and lonely here. The light from the town doesn’t reach here and the lone bulb in the light at the gate which used to keep the dark at bay has long since burned out.

I always tried to hide it, but I was terrified of the dark. The times I would sleep at your house, did you ever know I would lay in petrified silence? The sound of your breathing and the sliver of light coming from beneath your door always comforted me, though, as the memories of you comfort me now.

The cold winter night is closing in again. I can’t feel it, of course, but I hope you are somewhere warm and safe as the first flakes of the storm begin to fly. I hope you are smiling and happy. I hope somewhere in your heart there is a memory you still hold of me.

If that memory still burns, I hope one day my hazy face will spring to your mind and you will decide to visit me once again. And, if you ever find your way back to where the flowers have long faded into dust and the grass is dry and rustles in the wind and the rain and snow and sun have caused the name on the stone marker which marks where I lay to fade, I will be here. I will be waiting and though I can’t touch you and my kiss will not warm your lips, I will still try, because I love you. I always have, I think, and I know I always will.