i really thought we’d be friends forever. 

i bought you a gift for your sixteenth birthday and i thought that i’d buy you one for your seventeenth and eighteenth and every year after that. i didn’t think that’d be the last birthday gift i ever bought you, a necklace and those earrings i saw you looking at in the mall. i wanted to keep buying you birthday gifts and for you to keep buying me them. i really thought we’d live forever. 

years ago, the first gift that i bought you. i can’t remember what it was, exactly, or the party you held that year, just that i searched two stores before i found it, and then another for the bag and tissue paper. it took a while, but i finally got it the way i wanted it - nestled within the paper, placed in the bag, a note on the card attached to the handle. you were so happy to get it, and come my birthday a bag was pressed into my hand. 

other people buy you gifts, now. my friends, some new and some old, buy me them too. i’m not missing out, or even jealous. i just want to buy you just one more. 

next year, i’ll buy you a box of chocolates, and we can eat it together. we’ll sit on your couch and you can tell me about this year, about the party you held and the presents everyone else gave you, and i’ll just keep getting you presents until you get sick of me. 

or maybe i’ll see you in the halls and you’ll look away, or maybe you’ll accept my present but won’t reciprocate on my birthday and i’ll finally, finally stop going to the store the weekend before march 17th. who knows.