Dear Katie

We didn’t meet where we should have. We should have met during summer camp in the pooling June heat of 2018, all sticky skin and flushed cheeks. We should have awkwardly waved to each other in the belly of upstate New York, introduced by our mutual friend with ruddy cheeks. I would be “the girl with purple hair in Lilah’s dorm hall” and you would be “the tall girl Lilah has known for years”. Lilah would have said “she’s from Phoenix,” and you would have smiled and replied that you’re from Boston, even though you hate living there. In minutes you would be aware of my mocking side and I would know your affinity for singing. Our tongues have always been opposites like that: yours is soft, made for effervescent melodies and mine, vitriolic, waltzes into knots, desperate for attention. After twenty minutes, we would have said goodbye to each other for the first time. 

On Saturday nights, as I stare at your face sputtering across my phone screen, I wonder how many times we passed each other over the span of those three weeks, how many times your now-familiar face began carving itself into my retina.

It rained once, while we were both there, unaware of each other’s blistering warmth.  

I don’t remember exactly how we met now. I don’t know if you remember either. I just know it was after summer fizzled into memory but before I began passing freshman year algebra. Lonely, we plucked sunflower seeds from our tongues and planted them into the backs of our cellphones, decorating lonely nights with calls to each other. I learned you have two siblings and you crush on boys a grade ahead of you and your hair is the same shade of black mine was before I dyed it. I learn when you look away from the camera my form flickers red, blue, green. I learn how easy we become golden rivers, diaphanus, fed from Lake Erie, hips snagging on stray rocks. 

Am I still your vessel for containing solitude, or if I have become more than a point of convenience in your life? 

I never told you this. I could have done it that night, if it wasn’t for you, and for weeks I was unsure whether to hate or love you for it. Something felt wrong about being the source of your bitter melancholia. Or perhaps it would be lilac detestation.. You would be left with your call on the fourth ring, anger festering between your fingertips. I – amethyst, decomposing – would be the reason you were alone and you would hate me for it. 

I didn’t pick up your call that night, afraid of letting the reverberations of your tongue lull me into confusion. 

You made a playlist for me once. It was raining when I listened to it first, acoustic guitar coupled with tepid water blooming on concrete. 

You are Katie. You were the first person I told about my depression. The first person I felt at home with. The first person I told when my calculus grade dropped. The first person I call on Friday nights. 

You are Katie. One day, you will leave me. One day, you will grow bored of the withered flowers bursting through my ribcage and the way I speak in animalistic clicks and stutters. One day, you will unknowingly feed me abandonment with plastic spoons stained with unanswered text messages. One day, pastel pink and photos of black kittens will catalyze phantom pain in the cavern of my chest. One day, I will no longer think of you when I see polished ukuleles or am asked to edit a history essay. 

You are also more than just Katie. To me, you will always be petrichor – earthy, composed from nostalgic comfort and impermanence –  and I savor the scent of your lilt, our friendship clinging to a rubber telephone line stretching 3,045.06 miles, radiating the ghostly heat of each other’s tongues in silence.