My friends are doe-eyed, hesitant to respond when I say “love you” after casual conversation. They are loving and need to be loved; they are hurting all the time. They are either empathetic or apathetic, there really is no in between. They laugh at my selfishness, reminding me that sometimes crude behavior is worth laughing at, and every once in a while we will look at each other with doleful eyes and be reminded that we share a heavy heart. My friends pick the strings of guitars while I fall asleep in dewy grass with cold knees. They sing me folk songs while I close my eyes and listen; I have never told them how I thankful I am that they do this without request. They answer my phone calls at 5 a.m. and stand outside with me when it is (somehow) cold in May, telling me how love, well love is a funny thing.

My friends are brilliant in indescribable ways; they are always leaving me exposed and in awe. They are mathematicians, poets and politicians; I am always learning from their movements and the way that they speak. My friends are both hateful and loving, showing me the mediocrity of gray area and being in between. They are both optimists and realists, constantly leaving me caught in muse.

They are colorful and resolute, earthy and raw, and I will never be able to say how thankful I am that I found them along the way. I will never be able to find the right words to encapsulate our brother and sisterhood that is so rare to find. I will never be able to thank them enough for exposing me to extraordinary art and music and everything sublime.

My friends have showed me how infatuation comes in many forms, in many faces. They have showed me the art of letting go and the magnificence of expiring. They have showed me two sides of circumstances that I will never be able to configure on my own, and they have showed me how love, well, love is a funny thing.

And in a few months when we are sprawled across the east coast, I will lay down in the dewy midnight grass and think of you guys. And I will wonder where you are or what you would say or all of the people that you have inspired; that have inspired you. I will imagine by then that your hair has grown longer and your pens have run out of ink. Your papers are crinkled and thrown with hatred or scripted with benign cursive. And I know that there will be no friends to string a guitar or sing folk songs to me, but isn’t the art of ending so lovely? Isn’t it such a funny thing.