She was kind of like a walking poem. Her existence just shy of a work of art. She carried herself in an ethereal way, but there was something about her that was glaringly simple. Maybe even a little boring. Unoriginal. And I seemed to be the only one who could see that. Everyone else was enamored by her aura and I couldn't understand why. I certainly must have been at one point, but I had known her for too long now to be dazzled by her quirky antics.

As much as I hate to admit it, our relationship was quite romantic, in the truest sense of the word. It's impossible to deny that it felt like there was something supernatural, almost magical about us together. Like we were meant to know each other our entire lives. The number of times we almost met, the number of times we almost became friends before we actually did is more that just a little uncanny; it was as if a force of the universe was trying to keep us apart until the right moment. Which was not actually the right moment, but almost. Almost. Our relationship was just an amalgamation of an infinite amount of almosts. We were never quite what other people thought we were, what we thought we were (or hoped we were). Like we were always trying for something we both knew we could never reach, maybe even didn't want to reach.

I used to think that I was just afraid of intimacy. That I stopped feeling comfortable around her because we were getting too close and I had never been that close with anyone before. But it wasn't really that because we were never really intimate. I just didn't know that until I realized what intimacy was. With someone else. It was all too superficial, disguised by her not quite poetic way of being. Like we were always approaching closeness, but could never quite reach it.

I never really knew how she felt about me. I mean she told me— usually in long, sweet letters or cards— that she loved me. But maybe she didn't. Or maybe she really did. She told me once that her parents were more concerned when we were in her room together with the door closed than when she had guys over in her room with the door closed, and I laughed and thought nothing of it at the time. The thought of her being in love with me was not something I even considered to be real. But she would always sit what I thought was way too close to me. And she'd always find a way to be touching me. Or sleep next to me. I remember our faces would be inches apart, uncomfortably close. And still, I was always the one who turned my head away first.