[L e t t e r s | to | Y o o n a]

F I V E

Dear Yoona,

You'll never guess what I found. You know that book we used to write all our thoughts in during exam time? The one that we used to communicate when we were too busy to talk face to face.

I found it in my drawer today.

We haven't used it in a couple of years, but I remember that you would leave it outside your door with notes written in it and I would send it back with my own notes written inside. My writing was atrocious back then. I suppose it still is. 

We called the book, "Lu and Me: Im-side our minds."

I laughed then and I'm laughing now, because the title is so lame. But I didn't change it, because you came up with it, and you were proud of it. Anything you're proud of, I'm proud of, too. 

The book was less like a recording of our conversations and more like motivation during hard times. I remember you used to write that you were worried that would fail your exams, and I wrote back telling you that there was no way you could fail, not with all the study you did.

I was flipping through the book a little while ago, and then I found the page where you wrote that poem. Your school started exams earlier, so you finished your exams that year earlier than I did, and in your spare time, you sent me that poem. The one that you really loved and read to me in the park sometimes.

Should I write it here for you? I think, by now, the words of it are etched permanently on the walls of my mind.

A Dream

Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)

We stood together in an open field;

Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled,

Sporting at ease and courting full in view.

When loftier still a broadening darkness flew,

Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;

Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;

So farewell life and love and pleasures new.

Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground,

Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops,

I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:

But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops

Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound

Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep.

−Christina Rossetti

When I first found it again today, I started crying. I don't know why, but I just did. I know it's pathetic, because I'm 19 now and I shouldn't have lost my cool like that.

I'm okay now, though. I think.

You know, I never liked that poem. I think it's because I don't understand it. I don't understand what the author is talking about, and why she would write about something so sad.

You always used to tell me that it was beautiful, but I never saw it. I think I asked you to explain it to me once, but I don't remember what you said. I wish now that I remembered, because I can't ask you anymore.

I could probably Google its meaning, but I don't want to. I want to hear your voice explain the poem to me. I want to know what the poem means to you.

I flipped through the rest of the book after I found that poem, but nothing else caught my eye. So for the whole day, the book has been open on that page, the one where you wrote my poem.

I've always thought of it like that. My poem. Because even though I don't like it, you wrote 'for you, Luhan' on the corner of the page and I always thought that that was enough for me to able to say that the poem was mine.

I wish that I'd written a poem for you, with 'for you, Yoona' in the corner. That way, even if you're missing me (and apparently, you are), you'd have something of mine with you. A piece of my atrocious handwriting to remind you of me.

I miss you, Yoona.

And I love you.

Eternally yours,

Luhan. 

***

A/N: Thanks for reading~