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For my friend Lin, on their twenty-eighth birthday.

  1. I don’t remember meeting you other than it was at Quidditch practice which is a good sign if there ever was one
  2. You make me think of autumn coolness in Kasteel Well
  3. Of shopping for sweaters
  4. Of eating Italian in every European city
  5. Of Norway
  6. Diet Coke explosions
  7. Frozen fingers drawing in the sand
  8. A misplaced passport and
  9. Missed trains and
  10. A good story, though it didn’t feel like it
  11. Hobbes and Kip and Gilbert–
  12. That scene with the punches I saved and reread–
  13. My first glimpses at your writing magic, now I’m starving for it
  14. For the pirate stories, for the zombie stories, for a story about a brave kid chasing a river raft
  15. You didn’t run away when I told you about the whipping stories
  16. Or hugged walls
  17. Or grabbed your hand
  18. That dream I had about your face. It’s a good one.
  19. Sitting thigh to thigh in your loft bed, watching Firefly
  20. There was this moment before graduation, in my dorm room, where you held me when I cried. I have so few memories like that, tears that won’t stop met immediately by a friend.
  21. You’re asleep on camera again, during the wine years, and Cara and I talk ourselves to exhaustion instead of following your wiser example and rest.
  22. Sometimes you’d cry on camera, sometimes we’d all cry on camera, the three of us, during those wine years, and even when I thought we were a mess I still thought we were the best, doing the best we can, being brave
  23. I’ve always thought you’ve been very brave
  24. You race ahead and reach behind and drag us, me, with you
  25. And call more than text, thank you
  26. And tell us stories of kids in the library or bugs crawling out of patron’s decrepit laptops in the library and it is a beautiful and bizarre composition
  27. I think you’re both where you’re meant to be and going where you’re meant to be and I’m lucky to hold onto some piece of that, my friend
  28. Happy Birthday, I love you

With Love,
Natalie