Dear Claire

“Dear Claire”

I have written this over text, on postcards or notes, birthday cards and even over email in the days when we were younger and would exchange creative stories. My Claire since I have known you we have always been in the same time zone (save for two weeks on either side of our exchange) and you have hardly been more than a few blocks away or a few stops away by bus (or flight, when you lived in Amsterdam). Perhaps it is all these conditions that have tied us together but I think it is that we were simply meant to know one another. But it is not just that we know each other but that our friendship has withstood the test of time. In one month you will depart on a flight that will take you across the world and put the Atlantic and a great deal of land between us but I refuse to feel anything but pride. I am writing this now because I think by the time you are at YVR I will be far too big of a mess. Somewhere along the way I fell deeply in love with our companionship and your conversation. Forever, for whatever reason, I will remember the night we went swimming beneath the full moon. When we pulled up to the secluded lot and you killed the head lights on the car and it was suddenly only darkness. We ran to the edge of the beach where the laves lapped at the shore. We swam in the milky trail of the moons reflection. I felt like I could swim forever. We were floating on our backs, talking about months passed and the people we had met and imagining all types of personalities for the people we would meet. Talking about our dreams, as fluid and changing as the tide and waves that were carrying us. Staring across the hill I could see amber squares dotting the landscapes and at once I wanted to be in their light but simultaneously knowing that being your friend and being at your side, for these fleeting moments was more comforting. Mornings in treehouses on the Southern coast of France. Either reading books together or talking about our favourite passages. Trying to put poetry to all the moments that mean too much to be forgotten to time. To all the comfortable silences and also to way we sing with the speakers blaring and the sunroof down driving through our hometown, but to feeling most at home together, wherever in the world we are.