There was a time when the very thought of you sent me into a childlike state of sheer joy, nearly uncontrollable, and I acted childlike in return.

But I knew the normal cycle of love, knew the early/temporary emotions that get in the way, the body’s reaction to another body in close proximity.

These words themselves are part of that cycle.

I knew about puppy love, infatuation that comes with getting attention.

I will know it as long as I live as this body I am.

I am patient because the accumulation of moments spent being alive have taught me I am unimportant.

My temporary emotions, although beautiful beyond words, exhilarating and exciting, pass through my system like a summer breeze.

After all, it is the thought of YOU that matters.

Your life for yourself is all that matters.

How anyone fits into your life is up to you, not me.

I am the same, as are we all.

We may sacrifice our self-importance but it is a choice we make, regardless of our self-deception which implies others made that choice for us.

You choose whether you want to feel what I feel.

But what is choice?

That, my friend, is what we understand without knowing each other.

We have studied physics, mathematics, linguistics.

We have written reports for businesses.

We have danced the dance of a thousand parries, deflecting attacks from others but more strongly from ourselves, learning that the defences we developed were related to quantum physics.

The choices we made were as much about atomic processes as they were about social etiquette.

The smallest thought of the slimmest chance of seeing you still sets my thoughts soaring — that will never change.

What has changed is my response to that temporary excitement.

No longer do I simply recognise I am thrilled to see you and go on with the life I led before I met you.

Now, knowing that these temporary fits of exhilaration I feel haven’t gone away and don’t appear to go away, they are cycles, small waves on top of a deep ocean of feelings for you, I turn that temporary joy into permanent written words, celebrating our shared moments, although brief, in a longterm story, a story worth sharing with others, worth bringing in our friends, writing about, showing them how much they, too, are loved.

I give the world these words as a token of my affection.

You are my friend, a friend I can say I love and I miss you because we know “love” and “miss” are only words if you do not feel the same.

The years pass, we grow older, and yet here we still are.

I celebrate our friendship because no two friendships are alike — our friendship goes beyond words — our friendship is not only cerebral, it is atomic, an example of what could be proof of quantum entanglement at a macro level.

If some types of love are said to be a chemical attraction, could the same be said about the quantum entanglement of our friendship?

Once, I was in a hurry to know more about you, fearing death would get in the way if I didn’t know exactly who you were/are.

I don’t fear death anymore.

With you, I no longer worry that I might kill myself.

Not completely knowing you makes our friendship important, leaving room in the future to learn more.