Dear Warren (A love letter I never sent)

Dear Warren,
I write this to you knowing it will never really reach you. I am holding your hand in mine as I grip my pen in the other, trying desperately to make you hold on just a little longer, so that you might open an eye and read this.

I wish I had listened to you when you were still around. You were so quiet, it was hard to notice you. You came looking for me, I know. I realize now I am extremely judgmental of those I don't know. I jump to conclusions, and always the wrong ones. I admit now, if I was meeting myself for the first time, I would jump to the same judgements about myself. I see a lot of myself in you. It's for good reason I think. We have been afflicted by the same hardships. The same fatal flaws. But where I struggled to push out of the ground, you bloomed. You may have been hard to take seriously, but so many people respected you regardless. So many people liked you. Well and truly, with no exceptions or conditions. You have always been so soft spoken.

I didn't realize it until now, but I think I have always loved you. Not how a woman loves a man, or a mother their child, but how two children love each other. How race, color, caste, and creed play no part of it. I love you even though I shouldn't. I could always see a great sadness in your eyes. As if gravity pulled extra hard on your smile, willing it to furl downwards. I never thought to question why that may be. I never thought about a lot of things I should have. Isn't that just how it is? We think of all the "could'ves" and "should'ves" when it's all too late. I remember those little tokens of care and affection you left for me. The respect and awe you always had in my present. I am but a child in your eyes, but still you treat me with undue reverence. I never understood that. Why would you ever treat anyone like that. You hold yourself with such humble nobility. If you had claimed to be a king of a long lost and ancient race of peaceful warriors, I would have bowed to you without question.

I wish I had known the struggle you had gone through. I hope you didn't suffer, even though you must have. I wish I could go back to all those times you rode alone on the subway, shoulders hunched from the weight of the world resting on it. Sitting on the last car away from the people for a chance at solitude. I would hold you up, and share it with you. I would cry the tears you never let loose; would destroy the things that caused you your grief. If nothing else, I would have been there with you, not to talk or to listen. Just to be another soul in mourning.

I can't help but feel so hopeless and lost. We never were close, and yet without you I don't know where I am, or what to do. I don't know how to make sense of anything.

It should have been me, not you.

I hold your hand and write this, hoping that you will somehow read it, hear me, feel the pain I am feeling. I know it won't reach you. The heart rate monitor has deadened to a steady tone. Your fragile smile is gone. Gravity has finally won. You fought a glorious fight.

I miss you so much.