Dear Phillip
Dear Phillip,
You were my first boyfriend. I gave away my womanhood to you, right there in your parent’s living room on what I remember being a pullout sofa. It might have been one of those days after we tripped out on LSD—all sensations magnified back then in the 1960s when we preferred to make love and not war.
We were young, fifteen or so, inexperienced and fearful, but knew what we wanted. We saw blood and got scared, but we had one another. You were gentle and loving. I never said thank you, and now it’s too late.
We refrained from talking about feelings—our eyes spoke big words, your brown ones penetrated my green ones, asking, and I could not resist you.
That was the night your parents were at the movies. You invited me over to your place in Parkway Village, New York, a place built for UN families and mixed marriages right near that White Castle fast food restaurant, besides the carnival in the church yard, where servers wore starched hats and we ate square hamburgers on square buns. I felt so grown up and you made me feel so important.
Years later, I fell in love with the love of my life, Simon.
We parted ways, but I remember on the eve of my wedding asking you for a fling, but you declined saying it was not right. I missed my chance again with you.
Once I crossed literary paths with your sister and to my surprise, she called me a legend, the one who snatched her big brother from her childhood home, and absconded to Europe, at a time when kids nestled under the protective family umbrella.
Then, there was a twenty-year hiatus in our communications. Then, you appeared again
I was still drowning in desire for you, thinking of those days you came over to tutor me in math while all I wanted to do was devour you, but I knew that your aptitude would help me pass. I learned about the connection between math and music and each time you strummed me a song on your guitar, you added, multiplied and divided the chances of us meeting again, one day, gray and wrinkled.
Your mother, a retired literature professor followed my blog and told me not to tell you
you that you had a heart attack.
Each time I visited New York you asked where you could meet me for a drink. I remember your father loved tennis and had a heart attack on the courts, and I’m glad neither of you suffered. You died in your apartment with a glass of wine in your hand. I’m sorry I never got to say good-bye.
By Diana Raab. Published in The Oye Drum, January 2026
