Sometimes I wonder if she still thinks about me. I know I don't think about her as much as I use to but I pause and reflect a few times a week. I wonder if she's hanging in there and if her surgery went okay. If she's still in some pain or if she's finally okay. If she still cares about classical music and great poetry and pastels. If she's dating the boy of her dreams now and she finally isn't scared about things anymore. If she still likes to sleep naked and talks during history class like she always had before. I wonder if she hates and will always hate pie and laughs whenever she looks over family photographs in the basement.

I think about ice cream. Does she still like ice cream? Does she remember the first time we had that together at the park? How it was our last meal we ate together over bad programming at her place? Then there's all the other goofy times: the first words I said to her when I kissed her ("Come here."), how we always went to the zoo on our dates, how she always smiled when I had my hair curly and bore no make-up.

I sometimes catch myself dreaming about that car --her car-- and thinking of how much I wish I could just sit in there with her as she drove along the city. Just have my feet up on the dashboard with my sneakers on my feet, ready to go to the next place with my eyes closed. No talking, no touching. Just enjoying each other's presence as we got away a little further from reality.

I hate her. I have to hate her for the way she treated me at the end. The way she humiliated me. The way she degraded homosexuality activity with unkind words and how she mocked everything on what I liked. I hate how she left and acted like the "tough guy" to spare herself from my feelings. I hate how she never called me to see if I was okay like I had in the past for her. I hate that she's gone and will never come back.

I hate her.

But sometimes I just close my eyes and think. I think and think and think and I love her all over again. I remember the time we held each other at the bathroom airport and how funny and heartbreaking the whole scene was. How I kept crying and how she kept crying but we gripped onto each other nonetheless. I remember the time she welcomed me back home with a stuffed animal just for me. I even recall the time we cooked soup together and how awful it was and we just kept laughing and laughing and laughing.

I sometimes like to think that she never sees me anymore because. . . because, well, she's ashamed. Embarrassed. I'd like to think she was so upset of her actions that she felt she could never make it up to me. That it's too late and even though she knew I'd give the world to see her again, she couldn't do it simply because she hurt me too badly and is afraid to do it again.

I still love her despite of what happened and I'm afraid she'll never want to acknowledge it. I can only hope on bone-dry wishes and cracked dreams that she still thinks about me not in indifference but in lost memories. That she remembers the kid with the large laughs and silly sense of humor. The young woman that always had a thing for wearing obnoxiously colored bras, bad movies, and sophisticated plays and held a deep hatred for heights and math. The one that had loved her more than a lover which is, of course, is a best friend.

I love her.