What It Feels Like To Miss Someone
The first time I saw you was through the window in my living room. It was the same window you sat in front of after our first date. You also sat there the last week of the semester when you visited everyday. You sat on the couch one of those days while I studied next to you, the same seat I sat in after our first date, as we watched Baggage, as I cuddled my cat who had been to the vet that day.
I visited the restaurant months later with a different group of people. The tables that had been outside were gone, as it was December and cold, not warm like that September night. Remember how it had been sunset, and you said you wanted to live in a small cabin, I wanted to live in a small town. I told you I didn’t know what my dreams were, but now I am not as shallow and vapid as to believe that I don’t have dreams.
I’ve been having dreams, of you. It’s been a year since I saw you last and the dreams come sporadically. In one we basically reenacted the Fault in Our Stars, in another you had a child with someone else. In the latest one you bought a house, built of tired and faded wood. It was full of another family’s memories, but you said you were going to fix it up. You asked me if I loved you, and as I said yes my body felt more warmth than the sun felt during a solar flare. You proposed, and I couldn’t believe my luck. Then I awoke.
But I don’t love you. You have the most beautiful brown eyes I have ever seen of anyone, and those eyes gave me a glimpse of a life I wanted to better know. Your smile was intoxicating, and I loved the simple things that made you smile, and I loved the concentrated look that you got once you decided to the simple intricate and complicated.
You never gave just an easy answer. You didn’t like trucks for the freedom, but instead for the nomadic lifestyle. You asked about the psychology of violence when playing video games. It was hard to keep a conversation, but it was lively and different, and everything I wanted to keep conversing.
It still haunts me that I didn’t know what you said. I remember the day, the movie, the seating arrangement, and if luck had allowed, I would remember those words as well. I remember your hot breath on my ear, the electric shock it sent through my body. I nodded, and I don’t even know what I agreed to. I just know that if you had done that again I would have had to excuse myself.
I got a similar feeling when we got back into contact. Everything was tinged with sadness, wrecked with the knowledge of what was missed out on. We were both lonely, and in my mind we could fix that for each other. Suddenly, once again, every other guy paled in comparison to you. Once again, after three days of minimal contact, I was thrusted into this state of altered experience.
But, remember, I don’t love you. I do miss you, and given a minute, I could. 
