dear rowan

ii. part two

august seventeen 

dear rowan,

happy twenty-sixth birthday. i remember your eighteenth. i was sleeping over so at eleven o'clock at night, you shook me awake and led me to the roof. it was a horrible sight for me because of my phobia of heights but it was also beautiful. it definitely took my breath away. and i remembered that sight today. and i had to rush straight over to your mother's house. she told me to call her amber and to call your father jonah but it just seems fitting to call them the names i've always wanted to hear spoken to myself. mr and mrs machek. 

anyway, i rushed straight over there and your mother just wrapped her arms around me and we stood in the doorway like that for a few minutes. just cuddled together. i felt her warm tears soak into my shirt and mine into hers. and then she whispered, with tears clouding her tone, "sometimes it's okay to not be okay." and i understood what she meant. because plenty of people have told me renditions of the same phrase. it's just that that time, it made complete and utter sense. maybe because she was also telling herself.

but back to your eighteenth, though i'm sure it's still fresh in your mind because it was your eighteenth and mine was surely unforgettable. i remember that we just sat there for an hour, basking in the silence that was the night. our hands were joined and i was wondering why maude and your horrid father weren't coming up demanding us to come back inside. i can't even remember how we got there in the first place. and then you checked your watch and smiled. i checked my phone which was sitting in my pocket. it was finally one minute until your birthday.

i'm guessing you counted to sixty because exactly at midnight, you kissed me. extremely passionately on the lips and we didn't stop kissing for a while. you were officially eighteen and i was the only one who was there to celebrate with you. my green orbs looked straight at your concealed blue orbs. you always closed your eyes when i kissed but i never did. i didn't want to miss your features when we kissed. they were always so young and cute and hot and everything in between. they'd make shivers run down my spine as they always would. but fireworks would erupt when our lips moved together in sync.

maybe only i felt the sparks, the zings, the fireworks. maybe it was only me. but your mother assured me, after much time, that you felt them too. and i'm guessing she should know that. she is, after all, your mother. amber machek. why did you keep their last name, rowan? it's a question i've been dying to ask everyone but i know the only appropriate person to ask would be you. when you found out about them, was that when you changed your last name from your adoptive parent's to theirs? or did your adoptive parent's originally give you that last name? i never did get to ask you when you were here.

i wish i had because the chances of you replying to any of these are very slim. i wonder, all the time, if you have read a single one of these. maybe they all end up in your new american trash can, rubbish bin type thing. just please, write back. hey, i'll even write it on the envelope so you don't have to endure the pain you may receive from reading these all. the only thing you need to write on the piece of paper that is going to be slipped into an envelope is simply this; please stop sending the letters. they're clogging my new american trash can. 

please. just send something. call, even. but a call wouldn't be as treasured as the sight of your handwriting and the smell of your cologne, though the paper will probably smell like america more than it will smell like rowan machek. i hope it still smells like you because the t-shirt you left with me when you left still smells like you. i wear it around sometimes and people give me odd looks. i hate those people. your mother just smiles and purses her lips, nodding curtly each time i enter her home with the shirt on. i know it pains her to see me in it but she never makes any comment about it so i still wear it.