As I brooded at the pub over a few too many beers, I decided to write down what I could never bring myself to say out loud. Maybe by writing it down I can finally let you go...

   “On random notes of parchment, I'm scrawling my existence....”

   I can still remember the day too well, still see the dark hanging clouds and feel the moist humid sweat upon the palms of my hands. It was a cold and miserable day, the day I realized I'd lost you.

   Will you ever know how much your bright smile shone upon my life and provided me with the strength to carry on. I never told you how much you meant to me, or how your light has helped to carry me through the dark times of my life Even though times passed when you were so close I had but to reach out my hand and touch you, I was too afraid. Afraid that, like a delicate bird, you might be frightened and fly away, never again to grace me with your beautiful presence.

   Instead, I watched and waited, content to take in your beauty from a distance, unadulterated by my own glaring shortcomings. Like a fool, I thought you would always be there, that somehow you would not succumb to the same wind which blew me away from that place, that someday I would find my way back to you, and you would still be there when I returned. There were times when I found myself so deep underground I could no longer feel the sun, it was then that your radiance lead me forward and I pressed on. When I found myself swimming among the turbulent waves of the endless ocean though my legs went numb with weariness and the taste of salty water burned in the back of my thought, your image burned brightly before me, my shining star, my guiding light when all the other stars in the heaven had been consumed by darkness.

   Still, it wasn't until that cold cloudy day, which found me far away from your presence, that I realized the true nature of things. In all my travels, I sought to find a way to raise myself up to the pedestal on which I'd placed you. Never thinking that you might be on a journey of your own, which would inevitably lead you further from me. Your image began to haunt my dreams, waking me in a cold sweat with memories of an embrace which I had never felt. These dreams began to eat away at my mind, as sleepless night followed sleepless night.

   Yet, somehow I found the courage to seek you out and find your number. You were just a phone call away, and as I began to slip coins into the badly abused and weathered phone, I began to wonder. What could I possibly say to reconcile everything you had meant to me? With one coin left to drop, I was hit with the true nature of what I felt for you. It was not real love that I felt, warm and filling, but a fake plastic love, unrealistic and fabricated by years of imaginary hopes and dreams. There was no way I could ever truly love you, not the person I had lifted up to a position unattainable by any mortal in this cursed life.

   No, the truth was I had already lost you long ago, and nothing I did now could ever change that. I had waited too long, by now you had moved on to another place. Only when you felt cold and alone at night, it wouldn't be me you think of.

   Violently shaking, not from the cold but from your loss, the final coin fell to the ground, the sound echoing across the emptiness of my shattered heart. It was the last piece that I had foolishly hoped would bridge an uncrossable divide. Though I shuddered, no tears would come. I had lost you long ago, I was just too blinded by my own dreams to realize it.

   Only as I write these words of warning to those who may be young and more innocent, do the tears finally begin to fall. I lost you the day I had decided to enshrine you behind glass, motionless, untouchable, unreachable, unattainable, forever sealed away.

   So, as I continue on my journey dark and brooding, forever continuing onwards without you, I breath your name one last time as I watch your image fade. Farewell and goodbye, my fake plastic love.

   “...Am I destined only to die, the same way that I lived; in seclusion?” - The Ataris