Dear Jennifer,

Ever since you moved away, I can’t help but feel a longing in my heart for you to come back. I can feel it seize up in my chest and jolt back memories of your shy smile, the short hair covering your face, and, most of all, your sensitive brown eyes.

We used to sit in English class together and I wished everyday for just a slight chance to speak to you. I know we’re from total different groups and lives, but I believed we had a chance to arise from the robotic routine of our high school lives and set an example in our own pace. Hell, with your eyes, we could travel to different worlds, just by staring into your light brown oasis.

I watched the pain you endured. I saw the bruises that you carried on your skin and soul. I felt you drop your sword. I now realize it was from the verbal and physical abuse you suffered from day to day. Yet still you kept up with your passion. You still wrote poems and stories and songs and let your small voice be heard through your hand. I admire you for that. No matter how horrible you were feeling, you could still pick up a pen and create a masterpiece. You battled the storm, against the wind and rain. I’m so proud of you.

What I’m really trying to say is that I love you. I love your courage. No matter what happens, you walk with your head held high, and your dreams stand by your side. You are the strongest person I know.

Nothing will be the same without you. My soul cries beside my sword as I think about every wasted moment that we didn’t spend together.

But the past is the past. We have to put that behind us and walk forward with our swords held high with our heads. We don’t forget what happened to us, we merely acknowledge it and move on. This is the hardest obstacle for us to overcome, but you have achieved it. That is how you remain so strong. No challenge is too big for your determination.

I have grasped this concept, but I haven’t accepted it.

So yet again, I apologize. I wish I had reached forward and lent a hand to help you stand taller. If I had, I think that we might have had the opportunity to stand together and admire the battlefield before us. The battlefield of life.

Wishing about the past isn’t going to do me any good either. So please, I have just one question for you. You don’t have to answer this question, but I will wait everyday for your reply. I will stand outside in the battleground of life and feel the pure raindrops of the sky fall on my closed eyelids and imagine them as soft kisses. Here, I will wait for the answer to my only question that burns inside my mind that not even the rain can snuff out.

What’s Heaven like?

Forever waiting,

Sam