Unsent Letter to Andrew

I often find myself attempting to steady my heartbeat to the slow, constant ticks of the defective clock on my wall. I never did bother to fix that damn thing. I imagine each beat of the clock as a drum roll preparing me for an event that could change the fate of my life. Continuously I am let down. Why do I feel like my life is building up to nothing? Every day I drudge by as if the hands on that damned clock move slower and slower with each passing minute I begin to question... Why? Why must I find it necessary to question every moment's authenticity? How is it possible to look into my eyes and be ignorant of my fragmented sanity that is slowly splintering beneath me?

I'll never forget the way you noticed me that night. Completely nude in your bathroom, of course in every sense. Physically and emotionally. When I opened myself you were not afraid. You sat and took in my words in the same way your caramel skin took in the sun on that brilliant autumn day when we first met. (Some days now I wish we hadn't.) And some nights when I'm alone I'll fill up my tub and mimic the way your hand grazed my back and the moments when the tips of your fingers caressed mine and everything was connected, beautiful, and hidden and unknown. My quandaries surely showed no sign of paucity and yet you continued to dive deeper and deeper into the depths of the secrets I had been harboring for so long. I confessed all my troubles, how I composed musings on my thighs in red. How I tried to take many shortcuts through life but always seemed to get caught in the traffic. I told you about the roof garden and the night I threw my phone off the high rise. My eyes were sunken in and a reddish purple from the sobbing I had done on the floors of the apartment. On my 3rd day of a severe hydrocodone binge I was so sure I would take my last steps off that ledge before security reprimanded me for stepping beyond the gate.

We spent the night in that modest room and I allowed you to vivisect me. Makeup stained my face like watercolors on a canvas and you were my artist. That night the only thing that mattered was us and that cramped tub. There is a dearth in moments so intimate in my life and I don't think I ever came to terms with that moment ending.

You lifted my naked, battered body from the water and laid me down on your bed. You dressed my wounds and left me be for the night, only to take your place on the couch where you rested your cloudy charcoal eyes. That night, while I sat wrapped in your blanket I immersed myself in your smell as my eyes fluttered shut and I fell asleep wishing you were there by my side.

When I woke in the morning you were still there, and I crept out of your house so as not to disturb you and that was the last moment of what would be the most intimate of encounters I have experienced in my 23 years of life.

Even though we never spoke of it again, I know you still reach out to me and I'm sorry I've never taken your hand.