I don't miss you anymore. I miss the part of me that is you. I miss it because now that you're gone, it has ceased to grow and begun to shrink, and I know one day it will be as small and hard to see as a particle of fog, and I can never stop it. I really believe I'm never going to see you again. Even if you come back.

You were my honor. My compassion. You were my joy and love and hope. I fought to give these to you and they bloomed in my heart like the light I always dreamed of seeing in your face. What will happen to the good in me, now that you are not here to receive it? I know it will not fail, but I fear it will become lost in the midst of my lesser thoughts. The light will become an ordinary flower: beautiful, full of grace and fragrance, but still an every-day thing.

I don't forget that you were my shame, too. I suppose that is the part of you that will stay clear in my mind the longest. I miss that, too, and I don't wonder. I never commited so many crimes all in the name of one love before. I must have loved you terribly.

I think of the love I had for you as a token or keepsake. How I hate it. I take it out to look at sometimes, when the day is quiet, or in a moment of pause before climbing into bed and turning out the light - when I should be wearing it, wrapped around me like an enormous, beautifully made, warm blanket. And I'm haunted by the feeling that that blanket is just a minute behind me, and if I could go back there, if I could turn back the clock just a fraction of a second, everything could be as I remember it. But I can't reach that accursed clock.

What am I in you, I wonder? Just a harmless memory. I know that I was the fierce friend, the one who tried so hard when you didn't have the decency to try at all, the one who stuck by you, who heard you, who accepted you and loved you - so much that she had no love left for herself. You knew that, I am certain, and I regret that you never knew what I was when you weren't near. I was human again.

I was the one who was too weak to keep your secret. You recovered beautifully, given time, and you must have thought you had forgiven me. But you never forgot.

It's an amazing thing. When I last saw you, you were as heartbroken and bitter as I have ever seen you, and for the first time in all the years I'd known you I found myself able to imagine the happy man you might become some day. I hoped that you would come back this time and remember, as I did, what it was like in the first few months of our friendship, before anyone loved or cried or lied. But you said, "See you soon," and I knew that was the end.

Once, we hugged good-bye, and I felt you let go before you even began to hold on. You never would have chosen to hug me on your own, but when I reached for you that time, you did respond in kind. I will always be able to say that I embraced you, and you will never have to say that you held back. Not in all the peaceful years you live.

I hope that you are happy, wherever you are. I know you don't miss me either, and I'm glad.

See you soon.