I was so concious of when I realized I was in love with her. We were in a coffee shop just off campus, on our second date. We just talked. Talked for so long that both our coffee cups were empty. I had leaned back in my chair to properly watch her ramble about some weird guy she knew in high school. I wish I could remember what the fuck she was talking about becasue she was already halfway into the story when I realized I hadn't been listening. I'd spent the past few minutes just watching her smile when our eyes properly met, and breathing out tense laughter at her own jokes. At that moment I moved my ring.

In Irish culture women wear rings called Claddagh rings that signify whether or not their heart is open and available to the world., depending on which way the ring is facing. Outwards to mean "I am not in love" and inwards to mean "I am in love". I'd been wearing that silver Claddagh ring out and open to the world since I had gotten it in Dublin.

On that wednesday afternoon, in that stuffy little coffee shop she knew I liked, I took off my ring, and I flipped it around, and I put it back on my finger.

She didn't notice, how could she have noticed? How could anyone have noticed? Only I knew that something was different. Only I knew on that Wednesday, after a caramel macciato, and after hearing her endless chatter about everything she's ever loved, that I loved her. I made it silently offical that I loved her in that moment. And it felt like the world was completely new in that moment.

Dear Katrina,

I've been thinking about you a terrible amount lately. I lie in bed and you occupy every corner of my mind. All my hours I spend floating from room to room, praying to the god I don't believe in that by some divine miracle, you'll appear behind the door of the next room I drift to.

Late at night, I sometimes think we’re soulmates. At another point in time, in some other life, we’d be together.

It kills me to not be in that life.

Maybe in this world we’re not meant to be together in the end, but my bones long to be next to yours; To hold you so close we both begin to suffocate. Maybe in this world we're meant to be nothing more than friends, or acquaintances, or someday strangers pretending not to remember what once was there.

I know there's a version of me, in some other time, in some other life, is loving you.

And maybe that can enough for me in this life, to know that in a paralell universe I kissed you on that street corner in the sticky July rain.

I wonder if you think of these things late at night too.

In the privacy of your own mind, in the embrace of darkness, do you consider loving me? Do you consider letting yourself be loved by me in this universe?

Yours,