Remember to Breathe

A Letter For Lou

Dear boy with the blue eyes at the bar, in the desk in front of another boy, behind the counter at the coffee shop, under the bus stop shelter,

You think that maybe this is where it ends. Your story simply coming to its last page, falling, falling, falling short of really just quite living on, living in, living beyond.

Maybe I could tell you that there is more, help you find the ink to fill in those extra pages, the blank ones behind the gruesome, gruesome, gruesome photographs stuffed into your book. Then you think not, push me away, find a way to keep me far.

Must you not let me be a part of keeping you from falling apart then? Let the pages slip from the bindings of your book, no one left to pick them up, no one to want to put them back in order.

Is this it then? Do I let you go?

I think not, hope not, beg not.

For you see, lovely, you're more than simply a page in my own book. You're more than chapter, a verse, a line. You're the entire thing, my story from page one to page infinity plus ninety-nine. Everything that I've ever dreamed, the grass on the hill, the breeze in the sun, you're every beat and breath in my lungs.

If I let you go, if you let me go, it's more than one end.

So, tonight on this cloudy, clear night, I'll let you know that if you decide to let yourself go then, I shall too. For a story without you, is no story at all.

Let's combine our notes, our pages, our chapters. Let's create a book with things to replace the photographs of aftermaths we would rather not remember.

Let's remember the life, the will, the fight, the win.

So with this letter, please, please remember, that there is more to this existence.

Some day you will read this, when we finally meet for the first day, night, summer, winter, maybe a late evening in December. It will be the first of every last.

Until then, please hold on, don't give in just yet.

Without your name, your touch, your love, your life, I'll keep waiting for that first time. I'll keep holding on because, lovely, I need you to fill in my pages too, erase the memories that I can only wish to forget.

Sincerely with love,

The boy with the curls on the bus, in the desk behind you, with the coffee by the window, holding the shot glass at the bar

Ps: Our paths will cross with just a little more time, wont they?

--

Harry Styles, 19, second year university student. He thinks there's more to this, to this life that he lives, that he wanders through. There has to be, or there doesn't. He doesn't know anymore. He knows there's a boy though, a boy on the other side of his remedial maths class, a boy with blue eyes that barely find Harry's way. He knows there's more to this boy, but doesn't know how he'll bridge the gap, find his way to this boy that he'll see at Alpha Kappa's parties or at Delta Chi's mixers with too many beers in his small hands, falling into the beds of the wrong bodies. He knows that he'll wait though, that that boy will say he won't and Harry will hope that maybe someday he will.