Dear Myungsoo,

I wish I could say I’ve stopped waiting for you. I wish I could say your songs are old to me, they bore me. I wish I could say I’m not missing the weight of your stares on my back or I’m not brushed by the absence of your laughter in my life.

I wish.

But after all these years, it’s you I think about when my mind wanders off. I think of seashells on the beach, how they travel miles and miles of seaweed blue to finally reach the shore. They crisscross through the plains, until they meet the sand they had heard so much about in passing. But stuck in the sand, they long for the sea, the sound of waves, and sing about the underwater world. I feel a bit like them.

It still amazes me how much influence you had over me. I always cleaned the dishes, and I hated that work. But somehow, when you smiled at me with a pout and you sighed, I took up the dishcloth. And I always made the bed even though it fell in the list of your chores. But I did this one thing gladly, because then I could place our pillows a bit closer together, overlapping slightly.

I didn’t have to really, because in the morning I woke up with not even a millimeter of space between us, our limbs all tangled up.

I am still amazed that even from miles away, you can still make me cry into the pillow.

PS: How much influence did I have over you? Not enough to keep you here anyway...

With love,

Sungjong