his flower

I promised myself a while back that I would stop writing letters to those that I love, specifically you. I thought I could move on past that phase of my life, but as it turns out, I’ve never been one for change. You’re never going to read this anyway since I’m sending it to myself in a couple months, but if you were to ever read this, I think I would be completely mortified.
Disbelief passes me day by day that the boy I once loved could turn into someone so vile and crude. However, memories from this summer often eclipse over that hate so I am never truly able to say loved in the past tense as I should. My mother had gotten especially mad at me one day in July or August from how often I spoke with you, but it was also that day when we sat on facetime almost until 3 a.m. I distinctly remember feeling bare at that moment. Bare not only from loss of makeup and fashion, but bare because that was one of the first nights in months that I had truly been myself. You brought that out in me. The later it got the less we both said. But the beauty of the unspoken is precisely that. I long for the way you looked at me that night; not like I was beautiful, but that I was real. Stared, glared, and studied are all too negative a connotation for that moment. But you gazed. Like I was the every star in the universe. And to me you were the sun. Playing dumb, I asked why you had kept your eyes fixed on me. The most poetic moment we’ve ever shared was your response. A flower you said. I was a pretty flower you just couldn’t take your eyes off. And if I was made with wax rather than blood, I would have melted on the spot. But instead I smiled. Because you gave me one right back.
So no, I guess I don’t really miss you. The Cooper who creates tension, emits arrogance, and stands with the problematic. A problem causer rather than solver. A man whose ego could fill that of a thousand.
That’s not someone I ever knew.
But, once upon a time, I had met a man, who saw me bare to the bone, and still chose to try and win my hand.