finding what you never thought you even wanted to know

found a letter just now. earlier. as i was hanging up clothes in my closet. moving around old files. it fell straight out of a stack of school papers. post mark date: march 1995. still unopened. i sat for a long time. cross-legged on the floor. staring at the lettering. wondering, first, how it happened that i’d kept a letter this long. wondering how it had never been read. then further still, how I was ever going to bring myself to read it now. to not read it now. and i could hear ben harper, barely, plucking the piano and singing my, beloved one. my, beloved one. tore the envelope. you mean the most to me. and let the words spill. conscious that i could feel my heart beating in my ears. could feel my heart beating everywhere. five pages. front. she was a stranger -- I had known for years. back. the two hands of a prayer. together like the two hands of a prayer. page four. midway.

I mean, if someone wanted you to change this, change that – if you were required to do all the changing while he remained the same – that’s not right. Right? Maybe I just can’t go that far and give up so much of my life for someone who’s worth I question. You, for example, could make me change my life, I think, if you were around. I’d be willing to change, because it would have to be somebody important enough. It’d have to be someone I respect. Sometimes I’ll be driving home full of hate or even with the desire to just die, but I just tell myself, nope, I gotta see you again. At least once more. So I think of you, thinking of me, and I figure I got a lot of bull shit to go through before I see you again, so . . . I’ll just have to say that I love you and so much more and more and more.

We never did see each other again.
And right now I’m wondering how to find someone who’s gone.
Fuck.