To that boy I used to know

Nathaniel;

It rained again this morning. I went walking alone, down the misty road that leads toward town, and didn't mind the cold. The leaves have started falling, and the maple tree at the bottom of the hill stands bare, like it did the day you left. Maple trees will always make me think of you, with the wistful half-remembrance of a love gone by, even years into the future when we are both old and gray, living our separate lives without ever once meeting again.

I did love you, you know, even though we were just children; I don't think you believed me then, and have probably forgotten me by now, but I think I love you still, in some quiet way.

I still count the day you kissed me, under the maple tree in the back corner of the field below the playground, as one of the happiest days of my life. We'd been walking together, just the way we had every day since the day you smiled at me and took my hand across the space between our desks, my friends tittering as we wandered in wide, endless loops around the field while they watched. I don't remember what we spoke of; it was the sort of thing that is only interesting to children, and if I heard of it now, would make me laugh; you said you had something to tell me, a secret, and pulled me behind the tree where no one could see. I really like you, you said, and kissed me, just once, quick and shy and gentle, as if one of us might run. I love you, I said in return, and you looked at me, wondering, something indescribable in the curve of your mouth and the glimmer in your eyes, and I thought you might kiss me again, but the bell rang to tell us to get back to class, and you didn't.

You never did kiss me again; we were too closely watched after that, and you moved away that fall, on a wet, miserable day like this, and I never saw you again. But the rain and the trees, and the memory of a kiss bring you back to me as if you never left, and I thought you should know.

I've meant every word I ever said to you.

I love you.

Yours,

Andrea