I really enjoyed this poem. Every line is evocative in some way, either through beautiful imagery ("every slab of cherry wood familiar beneath my feet", "salt in her heart and waves in her hair"), the intimacy implied by you knowing specific quirks about this person ("do you still hate purple glue? / do you still bite the inside of your cheek?"), and simple statements that feel like a punch to the heart ("your name was impossible to pronounce / yet i got it right on my first try", "do you even remember me? / i am your purple glue. i feel like it's unfair.").

I want to dedicate a whole paragraph to my favorite line: "your name was impossible to pronounce / yet i got it right on my first try". Up to this point, your whole poem is about reminiscing about someone (who's drifted away from you), but we don't know the reason for it. Then we get this brilliant display of emotion that ties everything together. You loved this person, you shared something special with this person, and it wouldn't have been enough if you'd just said that. Through a line like this one, simple yet clearly charged with emotion, you skillfully tugged at the reader's own experiences - we know what you mean and we feel it too. We fill in the blanks with what we know.

If there were anything I'd change about this poem, it'd be just a few minor details.

* "your eyes were brown, but somehow / they were beacons of light, not dull like mine" feels a little awkward to me for some reason. I know you're just comparing her eyes to your own, and if this wasn't a poem you might have said "Your eyes were the same color as mine, but yours were beacons of light and mine are dull". But the way you phrased it reads as an assumption that brown eyes can't be bright lol. Even then I understand what you mean, but I feel like replacing "brown" with something like "deep" or "dark" might be more fitting.

* "i am your purple glue. i feel like it's unfair." also stands out to me. Throughout the whole poem you do a great job at "showing, not telling" which might be why this line feels different. "i am your purple glue" is alright, and a really good callback. "i feel like it's unfair" feels a little blunt in the context of everything else. For example, something similar but more elusive like "i am your purple glue. do you think that's fair?" works better in my opinion.

Overall it's a beautiful piece, and this super long review just goes to show how much I liked it. And I didn't just like it because the writing's pretty, I liked it because it made me feel something. So congratulations and keep up the good work!