I wanted you to be asleep yesterday afternoon, which I guess either makes me an anesthesiologist or a creep, but regardless, I hoped I would walk into our room and your mind would be on the westernmost star so that I could leave you a note. The thought of scratching pen against sticky note to express to you what I couldn’t make come out of my lungs made my face warm and my heart press deeper and I wanted you to be asleep so I could tell you I love you.
You once asked me why I never tell my parents I love them, but yet, I still murmured I love you into the phone when your tears soaked your throat away from comprehension. So no, I’ve never said it to you unhidden, but I’m starting to drip from the weight of all the times I almost did, and I wish I could say the same for my parents, but that’s not the point.
The point is that you weren’t asleep. You weren’t even there. It’s at this point in the poem when I’m tempted to reveal that this is friendship, that I’m mad I feel guilty for yearning this deeply for someone I would never want to kiss, that your mom asked if I was your girlfriend because she can’t understand that holding hands can be comfortable, not erotic.
But I think instead I want to reveal that I still wrote the note anyway and pressed it against my palms, so that every time I extend them to you, you know you don’t have to take them, but the words are there even if you don’t. We don’t hold hands anymore, because you don’t need it anymore, because our relationship is transcending beyond a need for the other for the first time in a year. And all I want is to tell you that you are loved when you sneak back into the room at two in the morning. Sticky note love can only be plastered on the walls, but transcend-need-love waits on the westernmost star,
waits in dreams.
I’ll meet you there.
Edited by Ashley Cheak (@axhleymorgan)
JADEN GOLDFAIN is a junior pursuing a B.A. in Writing from Point Loma Nazarene University. Her work has appeared in Blue Marble Review, Ice Lolly Review, Foreshadow Magazine, and elsewhere. She loves Jesus, her friends, and Stranger Things.