for the shoebox

I haven’t spoken to her in five years. I haven’t seen her in six. I try to remember her last phone call, but what I remember instead is lying on the floor of our dorm room with my head in her lap while she strokes my hair. Her fingers carve grooves along my scalp like rivers flowing from my temple to my neck. Her hands are as small as mine, but hers are thin and elegant. She doesn’t bite her nails.

I am waiting for the epiphany. Where I realize that I have moved on. I have to move on. But there is no epiphany, and I can't let go. All I have is this: a love letter to my best friend, which is really a love letter to the two of us at eighteen, alone in the dark on the third floor of Gallagher Hall, two girls in twin beds whispering secrets across the room. Those girls are lost now, grown strange and old. But I will spend the rest of my life trying to find them again.