1. You do not exist yet, and my life is not complete.

3. You’re six months old, cheeks rounder than apples, and I reach out to touch you, The Creation of Adam. I prayed for you in the delivery room. Thanks for returning my calls.

5. We’re dancing on two single mattresses in your living room. The end credits to a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie loop ceaselessly. I don’t even know if you like this movie. We watch it every time I come over.

8. We’re changing in your bedroom after playing lions and my eyes wander— catch. You’ve been looping in my head like Mary-Kate and Ashley have ever since. I want my eyes to stop being mine. I recognize this feeling as shame. All I can do to fix it is play pretend, so I play pretend. New eyes. New wanderlust. Page one: action.

9. We’re at your birthday party and I pull you into your bedroom to confess that I have a crush on your brother. You don’t care—the pizza’s here and presents are soon. This wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for. After all, isn’t love the only thing that exists outside of us? As you run out to join your shameless friends, I start rewriting the next episode. I suppose I’m too green to write us quite right just yet. I’ll do better next time.

11. We’re on a beach in Cape Cod. I want to drown because I’m in a bathing suit, but so are— catch. I’ve only ever been in open water with you. I can’t analyze the significance of that—I’m not a good enough writer yet, eyes still catching whenever you’re around—but I keep it in the script regardless. Something something the waves pull me under and you’re the first gasp of salt-lick air.

12. We’re on a bridge arching over Niagara Falls. There’s a photo your mom took of us together. I’m wincing at the spray, terrified. You’re taller than me—so protective, your bones grow with it. Your spine is straight, always the braver of us. Always keeping us afloat. The water isn’t salt-lick, but I breathe you in anyway.

14. It’s bleeding sunshine and we like the same boy. I hold onto the idea of your brother like a crutch, but this new boy likes you, which means I have to like him, too. You and I don’t talk. I don’t come over. The horizon line doesn’t look right without you hanging off of it. As August slips off our shoulders, he tells me doesn’t want me. This is sadness, I tell myself, but when he doesn’t want you either, the relief is open water pulsing in my blood. In his farewell episode of the series, I call you to apologize. I wasn’t very nice to you. We only watched the movies I wanted to watch. I was Mary-Kate and I made you Ashley, even though you didn’t want to be, because if we were anyone else, then all that was left for you to be was the love interest. All you could be was comedic relief. It’s okay, I tell myself. I’ll make you a brand-new role. You’ll love it. You’ll play the part just like you should, and so will I. You extend a forgiveness I do not deserve and tell me, no more stupid boys. Right into the camera, I beg, no more stupid boys, and I mean it viscera-deep. I do not think about why. It’s the only thing I don’t have to think about.

16. We’re at a motel in Rhode Island. We’re in a diner in Rhode Island. We’re on a beach in Rhode Island. You are the open water, and the air is salt-lick again, dangerous with novelty, but it’s okay because we are visiting my boyfriend. Boyfriend. Finally: the wanderlust I’ve been trying so hard to write, just four hours away. Screw your brother—this boy is mine. I don’t have to share him—I still do. I can’t see him without you there. He never asks why, and neither do I. In a twist ending, he ends up being the villain. Cauterizing my wounds, you remind me, no more stupid boys. Like a sacrament, like a renewal of vows, I repeat, no more boys. I don’t say ‘stupid,’ but I don’t notice the finality through the blood in my teeth. I’ll have to be more careful with the pen next time, blood be damned. Still, I don’t break my promise again.

17. We are in the cafeteria of our high school and nobody has looked me in the eye for nine months—nobody but you. There’s no more boyfriend, no more friends, no more family—there are people who hate me, and you. But you braid my hair into fishtails during band practice. You pack two lunchboxes—one for me and one for you—because you know I won’t eat if you don’t. You sit beside me on the uncomfortable cafeteria stools and peel off the peel and the pith of my clementine as I try to eat, as I try to study, as I try not to drown. I refuse to believe there is a world beyond you because the little I’ve seen of it so far has been very, very mean. You are not mean. No more wanderlust—not if the sky is this dark. The show is on hiatus. I’ll be back, I tell my viewers. They don’t care. Neither do I. All I care about is lunchtime.

18. You’re at my graduation ceremony, and when I walk on stage, shoeless and guileless, you chant my name louder than Pomp and Circumstance with your birdsong scream and golden-hour hair and latchkey grin. The people who hate me are booing. They are the Red Sea, all blood and open water and the air is so salt-lick, I feel like it’s drowning me, too. But you parted them every day for two years from an uncomfortable cafeteria stool so I could walk this stage. The years of drawing the map between our tangled mass of beating, bleeding hearts on construction paper are over. Paint smears as our braided arms that reach for the crayons—The Creation of Adam—rescind, snakes uncoiling. You tell me, no more fear. I can’t say it back.Whole seasons of oceans and waterfalls and rivers blow past me as I catch your eyes in the crowd, our memories lost to syndication. You’re in every script, on every page.

20. You’re in an airport in Seattle. You’re in a dorm room in Seattle. You’re 2,849 miles away from me in Seattle. No more motel rooms or diners or beaches. No more fishtail braids or extra lunches or uncomfortable cafeteria stools. You are gone, and I do not exist.

21. You forget to text me for my birthday—apologize four days late. I text you for yours. It’s okay. The show came back from hiatus, but the audience is bored by this season. I stop reading the reviews. I stop reading. There are too many words that crack the floorboards. I don’t want to fall through. If I fall, I know I’ll never hit bottom. If I fall, I’ll drown with all that open air.

23. In the end, all it takes to sink is a simple text after 179 days of silence: Happy Valentine’s Day. I miss you. And I realize then that it’s been very, very simple: we have never needed to miss each other, and now we do. As I choke without salt-lick, you make a post on Instagram about your very first boyfriend, finally finding your own wanderlust, and I can’t hold back anymore. It’s a deluge, and after all these years, I finally drown. I stop struggling and let your open water drag me under. I should’ve known I loved you all wrong; so much of love is selfish distraction. I’ve wandered all across the Eastern seaboard trying to sew you to my skin when all I ever wanted was to be in your living room with Mary-Kate and Ashley. Your love interest. But you’re gone, and I have to stop watching the horizon to catch on your firebird return. You can miss me all you want, but you will never love me all wrong. I don’t mind—at least you love me at all. And in the devastating peace of knowing that, knowing you’ll love me no matter the direction the River Styx flows, I can finally start to strike the stage because I don’t need to lie on a screen just to exist anymore. There is truth in breathing in water. There must be love in this world that isn’t you. After all, isn’t hope the only thing that exists outside of us? I will never tell you this. I don’t need to. There’s only me. There has to be. Just dry land and me. But still, still:

0. I miss you too.

– Windy Sharpe