a friendship.

i'm at a table next to the window overlooking the parking lot at cafe mundi. i ordered coffee and migas. i've been working on the poetry collection more. i want to feel 100% confident about the work i'm releasing soon, and i'm not at that point with the last half. so i'm re-formatting and re-vising and re-polishing over the next few days. i'm also still designing a front and back cover. who would have thought a poetry book would be so complex? i'm having to cultivate more patience with the process of creating. i'm a classic aries; we lack patience and often start a million different projects at once. but. i do finish some projects. this is one i'm hell bent on finishing. the main reason i'm so anxious to have the book printed is because it is time sensitive. you see the book is dedicated to my former best friend, the one i had a falling out with eight months ago. i would like to send it to her as a surprise birthday gift. her birthday is in three weeks. who knows if she will have a change of heart about our friendship, or me, but i really want it to be in her hands on the day she turns 28. published through a company or not, i'm having some copies printed from a local print shop so that i can get one out to california in time. glossy cover and all. it will be my first real book. she was such a supporter of me as a blossoming writer during the time we were close, and there are a few in the collection about her, although no one else would be able to tell which ones. i think my heart might be a little broken if she does not respond to the birthday gift, but gifts are given with no strings attached. love cuts through all realities.

i've saved what she wrote months ago with the bouquet of flowers sent to my office. reading her note still makes me glow.

dear m.....
i think you are an indisputable rockstar of a woman, and ef any dumb bitch who doesn't REC recognize it. i hope you can enjoy some nice flowers this week, and remember, i think you're stellar.

muah!
j

for weeks people at the office were convinced that i had some secret admirer and wanted to know who these gorgeous flowers on my desk were from. i would tell them that a friend sent it to me and they did not seem to believe it. the truth is i blushed when the flowers were delivered and i opened that card from her. i probably did not look like someone receiving flowers from a mere friend. i was literally glowing for the rest of the day, and my boss picked up on the under currents. the long time secret is that j had been my serious, serious crush for over a year. i always wanted to be with her. but she was in a relationship and i had to settle for the second best role of friend. i was absolutely terrified of her finding out how i truly felt at the time, because i think i feared it would somehow change or ruin our friendship. i did not know if she felt the same about me. it felt dangerous to go there. how i so wish i had had the courage back then.

the closer we became the more often she told me that she loved me, and wrote another note about how fabulous and amazing she thinks i am. :) people would see us out in public places together and assume we were a lesbian couple. even her girlfriend was accusing us of having an affair, the girlfriend she wanted to break up with.

one night we were downtown together for a drink or two with friends and on our way back to my car she took my hand into hers. we walked hand in hand like that through the streets. it felt so right. like we had belonged together from the beginning. a few of my co-workers happened to be in the garage at the moment and spotted me holding hands with j. i did not care. she then asked to spend the night at my place because it was so late. there was more touching, more (what seemed) suddenly nervous conversation. she slept on the couch. i slept in the bedroom.

we had our falling out in may, and she left her girlfriend shortly thereafter. she moved to california in august without saying goodbye. i have tried eversince to maintain some sort of contact. maybe i'm crazy for thinking that there was something there between us. maybe i somehow got the wrong idea and she simply only liked me as a friend, but i've never had a friendship like this one before. it does not make sense to me that this "love" would vanish into thin air.

dedicating my book to her is my last attempt to express how much i care, how much i miss her, and still love her.