I loved you ever since you walked into my [X] grade classroom. I loved you ever since you sat down at my lunch table with your brown paper lunch bag and gelatin-free gummy bears. I’ve loved you ever since then, and I can’t imagine a world in which I never did and never will.

When you texted me “can we talk?” my heart shattered like an icicle’s kiss to a ground without snow. I sprawled out on my bed and prepared my tissues and prayed to Aphrodite that this wasn’t what it was. I hoped you were joking. I dreamt maybe I could have done something about it before it happened, but it was no use, for it wasn’t your words which sunk me into a weeks-long delirium, but the fact I knew I could never get over you. It was the way I’ll never love another like I loved you. It was how I’d dreamed of me being your firsts and you being mine, the wedding planning, the baby showers, the endless playlists and fantasias surrounding you.

It was always about you, everything I’ve ever done. When I went clothes shopping, I thought, “would he like this?” I’ve lain awake thinking of times I’ve fumbled my words or said something grotesquely embarrassing around you, hoping you don’t think of it with the intensity I do. I’ve messaged you at all hours of the day in an effort to cling onto the scraps of you that remained from our bitter goodbye. I’ve talked to my parents about you so much, they must think I’m delusional for putting all my admiration into a young, puppy love, when really, I feel like an old bitch whose lifelong mate has walked the thin string of life.

The stuffed animal you left at my house last June, I kiss it every morning, hoping you’ll return to me. Hoping you’ll say “baby, I was wrong” and stay, if but for one more night. I hope every day, you think of the last time we were together. It was over a month after we cut the string, and yet I still hoped I could be alone with you in my room so we could talk. So you could confess how you still adored me with every cell in your beating body, and the vibration of my laughter could echo within my halls as we embraced each other for a moment that seemed to last forever. And yet, I still feel as though that could never satisfy me. What’s life without a little heartbreak, heart aching to reach out for you, to hear your voice once more? I’ll never stop listening to the songs that remind me of you, or rest my head on the pillow you claimed. I’ll never stop loving you.