I always have. From the moment your best friend introduced me to you there was this slight shift inside of me, this separation as if a third of me was running just a split second behind, trying to catch up to you, to where ever you were leading me.

And after that, waiting for you, sitting on the sidewalk waiting for you to meet me, walking into a store I knew you would be in, I would have these huge empty moments where I would try so hard to remember what you looked like. I would try so hard and I would be scared that I wouldn't recognize you.

I would remember bits. Your hair, curly, the slope of your eye lids, how you smiled.

But not a whole picture.

And then I would see you. I would see you and my insides would still and I would think oh. Oh. There you are.

I would hold you in my car, sometimes, late at night, in that park, I would hold you and tell you how beautiful you were and you would argue with me, tell me to be quiet, but it was true. Is true. You were the kind of beautiful that would make me forget and then, seeing you again, watching you walk across the parking lot, my breath would leave me.

Even now, ten years later, even now walking in a store a woman will walk down an aisle and from the corner of my eye I think it's you and I can't describe what happens to me, but it's like this:

It's like the center of me, if there is a soul or a spirit or a metaphorical heart, if there is one it condenses in on itself and just hesitates, stutter steps, as my physical being, all this nonsense and shit that doesn't mean a god damn thing keeps going forward and then there's an expansion, my insides blow up, a big bang and I rush back into myself and I can't bring myself to go and look to see if it is you.

What would I say?

Hi. I've loved you every single day since. I've loved others, but there has always been you and your bashfulness, your sense of humor, waiting on the trunk of your car in the rain for the police, swimming through the covers to touch you in the middle of the night, startling awake from a nap to you yelping at the television. Always, always, just there, in my heart, in my head, in my god damn dreams that won't leave me alone.

Do I say that? Do I walk up and say hello, you've haunted me. I have dreams where you touch my hand, just touch my hand, eight, nine, ten years after you told me we should disconnect, in a god damn dream you touch my hand and everything comes back into focus and I'm happy.

You can't say that. No one says that outside of movies and Nicholas Sparks books. So I move quickly through the store. In theaters near where you live I still look for you. But I don't know why. I wouldn't do anything. Wouldn't approach you.

I went shopping the other day and walked by a woman, someone I knew who was not you, and I walked into this cloud of perfume, this warmth of where she had just been and it smelled like your perfume. And I don't even know if that's true, I don't even know if I really remember what you wore. But I remember how you would be in front of me and I would touch the small of your back to move around you, touch the small of your back to say hey I'm here, be careful, and you would move just enough and there would be that smell, that perfume, and I loved it.

And she moves, she who I know isn't you, and I smell the perfume and I think of you and there's that split. That slight tilt to everything. That shift and spin and if you were to pull up next to me at a gas station what would I do?

Say hi? Say every new person I meet I still think of introducing you to them. I have some amazing people in my life you need to meet, right now, so they know you and can understand.

I know this is ridiculous and crazy and I know that there will be this girl, this beautiful, funny, sarcastic, smart girl who wins me over, who makes me laugh, who dances in the car with me and does overly dramatic duets down the interstate with me and in time, maybe ten more years, maybe twenty, we will have kids and dogs and she will have her own perfume and I will wake up in the morning and she will be in the shower and I will be scared because I don't remember what color her hair really is and she will walk in and I will say oh. Oh. This is you. This.

And you will be a memory of a girl, an amazing girl, who gave me so much without realizing it, so, so much.