From: That quiet girl, 17, Massachusetts
To: You, 17, Massachusetts

Please understand what I am about to say.

It breaks my heart.

I love you. I love you. I. love. you.

I never believed in love at first sight. I was a jaded teenager wrapped up in cigarettes and art and maintaining my high GPA. You have changed me in ways I thought I could not be changed, and it kills me that you don’t care. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, I would kneel at your knees and weep at the hardships you’ve had to bear throughout your short life, pain that I could never experience in a million years; but you don’t seem to care. I am anguished, I am tortured in love. We see each other four times a week, brushing by in our summer jobs, content to playful banter and quiet, fleeting conversation. What you dont see is that every time you walk by, bumping your hip against mine, is that I watch you walk away. I can see the scars across your skinny arms and legs, I can trace that place on your body where you’ve carved a message to the world. I allow myself to dream, for those precious five seconds, that you will turn around and meet my eyes.

You never do.

You talk to me daily, unaware that my answers have been carefully crafted over late, sleepless nights. Every question you might ask I’ve already thought of. Answered wittily. Became a person much cleverer and suave and worldly than I am, because I want to impress you. To be like you.

But the funny thing is, you’re the one person I can completely be myself with.

But you are not perfect. You are angry, you are fucked up beyond belief. But I’m here. I want to care for you. I want to hold you when you are weary, I want to cry when you are sad. I want those other girls in your life to fade into the background and become part of the crowd, and I want to stand out because to you, I want to believe, I am perfect. I am not too short or too round and plainfaced and short sighted with unmanageable hair. I am simply perfect.

And in exactly 22 days from the time of this note, if you still haven’t noticed me, then I’ll do it. On the last day in the picturesque little summer sea town where we met, I’ll kiss you by the big old maple where we first talked this year, when I got my favorite shirt dirty helping you do a job I wasn’t even on duty for. Maybe you’ll laugh at me, so bold and forthcoming where I am normally reserved. But maybe, just maybe, you will kiss me back. And you will say the words I’ve longed to hear since I used to watch you shuffle fast food back and forth many summers before:

I love you.
because I love you, too.