Dear familiar stranger,

Been wanting to write this for a while now, but I never knew where to start.

It's the end of the year. It's Christmas, and I can't help but look back.

Tears threaten to fall already as I write this.

I sit, wondering where it all went wrong. There was a time when you and I were inseparable, we told each other everything and certain things we only ever saved for each other.

For example your smile — the way your pupils dilate, the crease on your forehead smooths, the reddening of your ears, the slight tilt of your head and finally how your lips and cheeks would raise — a smile so bright and beautiful it always left me speechless and my heart leaping for joy like the heart of a springbok.

I look out my window and I can see young ones, walking past hand in hand...they remind me of us. Somehow, this season has made your absence louder. I guess Christmas has a way of asking who should be beside you... My heart answers with your name everytime.

You don't know, bug I still save things just for you. Thoughts, jokes, silence. Moments that you'd get without me having to say too much. I wonder if you'd laugh at how silly and dramatic this sounds or if you'd smile that smile, the one that made me feel at home and like I could do anything.

I don't know when we became this. Strangers with shared memories. Silence for us was never a problem, but it seemed to let the distance grow quietly just like winter. This isn't a letter about what went wrong, quite the opposite actually. It's about what went so right, it still hurts.

So here I am, at the close of the year. Surrounded by lights, wishes and endings, writing to the ghost of us.

I'm in tears already, because it's Christmas, and I wish you were here, not necessarily to fix anything, not for a promise of forever, but just so you and I can exist in the same moment again. Even if, only for a heartbeat.