dear violet

oh, violet. 

i'm here on the floor of sasha's grandfather's kitchen & i think the two of you used to be lovers before everything & it's crazy to me that everything happened the way it did but i don't think it really is all that wild. 

violet, i've told this story to so many people & i really hope that by telling you here and now it doesn't mean anything different, but that day you drove me me to buy monistat and the day i tagged along to go to dinner with you and our friends & you played that song and you screamed along to the words i felt deep within my soul so much love & how much elliot loves you all the time and i said to myself, "damn, this is how elliot feels every day, and that's so fucking beautiful." 

in the past few weeks, i've learned that many of the people i've grown to love are not returning to our little college, and it's begun to deeply shatter me, and i've also learned that the certainty of you coming back is slimming, and i truly hope that you do, and i truly deeply hope you don't. i fucking love you so much, and i don't think i've ever really thought about how much i've needed you around until i considered you being gone. when i was packing up my room and i played me & magdalena and i walked past elliot's room and the two of you were just standing & swaying like middle school dance partners with nothing but pure, nearly unbridled love for each other i thought about how for the rest of my life that song will make me think of the two of you. 

there was a point where ema and i were becoming something to each other where she asked if it bothered me that you would kiss each other and i told her, as i truly honestly feel, that it doesn't. i don't know if it has ever needed saying, and so i'll say it anyhow, but i love the way you two love each other and i would never want to come between you. 

violet, i hope we have never been at odds or been put in competition with each other. i've felt horrible at times about keeping her from you & also selfishly not acted upon it. i am glad that it worked in a way that you drove her to the airport and were the last person to see her, and i am glad i did not go with you. in all logical senses, it did not make sense for me to go with, and in all emotional & spiritual senses, it needed to be the two of you in that old, moulding car. 

i've been thinking about lemony snicket a lot recently, and his "letters to beatrice", and how we talked that time about how much these little books mean to us individually, (for good reason too, as your name is violet after all). i've felt so strongly about so many people recently the poem/letter in which he says he will love beatrice if he never sees her again and if he will see her every tuesday, and so on and so on, and though i will never, of course, i think, feel quite the same intensity with it that i feel towards ema, it is that one line that sticks out to me about you in this moment. 

violet- the point of this letter is to tell you all the things i thought of on that floor & to really never tell you. i have told two or three of our friends already that i am writing this to you, and i'm sure i'l tell ema the next time i talk to her, and whether or not it gets back to you is a lovely mystery. i hope that even if this was it for this lifetime, we will find each other again in the next in quite the same way. i miss dearly those dark winter nights when i learned about you and you leaned your head against my knee as i spun drunk into oblivion, and i miss the fall before when we would only see each other at parties. i miss when i would go to my room and you would be outside, waiting for elliot to let you in, and i miss when elliot and jo and i sat on the balcony and she made a joke that we all sleep in our girlfriends rooms and elliot, in a way that was proud in a way only elliot can be proud, said, "but violet sleeps in my room."

i'm sure i will see you again sometime, somewhere, even if you follow ema and finn and ari and amelia and everyone off into oblivion. 

goodnight, darling violet, i hope our paths will cross again. 

eternally yours, and all my love, 

len