Your prettiness is seeping through, out of the dress I took from you.

So pretty.

Well, you are, but instead of please please don't leave me it's please please believe me. I don't think you would if I was to tell you. You might believe that I adore you, and you might believe other things too but you wouldn't believe that. I thought that if you caught me looking at you too long you wouldn't catch my meaning. You never think people are looking at you because you're beautiful and they want to absorb you before they're deprived of you. You think people are looking because you're not good enough, not because you're too good to be true. I don't think you noticed me looking. I love the lines of you, blue eyes and fair eyebrows, proud nose, pretty teeth, your little chin.

I saw you today, and it was lovely. Lack of subtlety, completely, about a lot of things you were saying and a completely lovely way of doing it because you're so subtle about other things, like job applications and self-advertising and being generally wonderful. It wasn't just the two of us- our other friend was there, and it was good to be the three of us. I was glad to have her there too because it meant I didn't feel so strange being alone with you.

You were wearing a navy fleece and I was sat next to you. Your jumper makes me think of comfort and kindness and sensibility and respect, zippered up and keeping you in and the harsh cold out.

I want you exactly as you are and no different, trousers too short and hair scraped back, head bowed and utterly beautiful.

When we read the papers together our shoulders made contact and I could feel the vibrations of your laughing and speaking through it. I would have been happy to sit all day if I could have sat there in that space, in that position, laughing at ridiculous paper assertions connected with your insides. They're usually hidden, you see. I don't think you know you're lovely and that makes me want to tell you, in detail, exactly how lovely you are. How can you not know? How can noone have told you?

You said you went to some god forsaken shag tag night, for a friend. I can't imagine anywhere you'd hate more. You don't like dancing, you never dance in public, you hate that particular brand of sexual thrusting exhibitionism that proliferates in so many plastic nightclubs. Someone was rude to you, oh darling I'd have set him straight. You set him straight by the sounds of it though, no need for anyone else's help. You're so fantastic at defending, at keeping yourself safe and keeping your principles.

Personally, I adore dancing. Not the kind you hate. I adore moving to music. I'm not in the least sexy when I do so, and I don't intend to be. I skip, hop, jump, pump my fists, stick out my elbows. My face is consumed in a maniac's grin, no pouting here please. There's no chest to speak of, and I don't wear the sort of clothes that look good on a bump and grind. You wouldn't do this kind of dancing. You wouldn't like the drug scene that goes with it. That's OK.

I'd like to dance with you, not my way and not their way. If I could, I'd like to go to one of our houses, when it was quiet. Perhaps house sitting for someone else. I'd like to watch a film and make you dinner to eat side by side. I'd put on some slow, slow music, something old. Paper Moon by Ella Fitzgerald, or the Cranberries, whilst we washed up, and I'd hold your hand and twirl you, slowly slowly so you got the rhythm of it, and then sway, holding your hand on my chest, resting my mouth on your hairline, like old times, new times for both of us. Dancing in the kitchen is always the most romantic, I think. Soporific swirling with sudsy hands with a tinny radio, like something out of the forties in technicolour.

I don't think you are straight as you say you are. I'm not so deluded that I think you like me, because I'm not clever enough, or hardworking enough, or I'm too flip. Here I'm nothing but serious but in real life I'm as flippant as can be. I think that you're in love with that girl that you're always talking to on the internet, the one you can keep at a safe distance because she's got a partner. I bet you feel something for her though, something quite other than what you profess to feel. I'd like it to be me, but if it can't be me I'm glad it's someone who returns your affections. You deserve it, so much.