Dearest Little Girl,
I didn’t mean to forget you, to push you away for thirty years. I thought I knew you, but it turns out I created memories from photos and stories. I thought you were the happy, smiling child everyone said you were.
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Dear Tiffany,
I wish I could warn you. You don’t have to fear them. They are made of flesh and bone, just like you. They can’t control everything, even though they try so hard you believe it. One day you will realize they are fragile. You are strong. You can snap them into pieces with your words. You will bite your tongue. You will keep your distance.
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Dear Younger Self,
How could you have known? You came naked into a world that didn’t want you. Born on a kitchen table because your mother didn’t have the money for a hospital. Like everything else in your life, you’ve pretended this is cool when it’s actually pathetic. You have to admit it makes for an interesting story.
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Dear Sophie,
I wish I could tell you that things get better. I’m not really in a place to tell you that, though. I know you’re sitting behind the desk answering calls and filling out paperwork. I know you tell people you’re “just a receptionist” while applying to grad schools and going to prenatal classes. You’ve got big plans for yourself and your little one whose tiny heart sounds like big wings through the speaker at the obstetrician’s office.
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Dear N_____,
This letter is a little late, fifty years is a sizable chunk of time, but I wanted to tell you that you can stop searching for that lovely brown linen skirt you left behind after a week’s visit with me when we were young girls on the brink of life. I hope you have not spent too many of the decades between that summer and this one riffling through closets, calling various hotels, reaching out to friends to whom you might have lent it.
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Today, you told me you never had romantic feelings of any kind. Those words knocked the breath out of me. My chest squeezed tight and I had to swallow multiple times to keep tears from spilling.
But do you remember when we walked through downtown so late it was practically morning? You offered your arm to me like a gentleman, and I took it. We walked aimlessly for hours.
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When you do an internet search for “death of an unrequited love,” some interesting things pop up, but never the right ones. What about when the person for whom you have an unrequited love dies? What then? What about the closure that will never be, the hope that continued to exist, the possibilities that have now vanished? We had a story, in my mind. Now it will never have a resolution.
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At first, I thought I’d killed you. The Friday before, you texted to tell me you were going to drown yourself in the Monongahela River. It was late Spring. You were drinking again.
“Go to the ER,” I told you. “Please don’t give up.” But, I didn’t offer to sit with you or hold your hand till the pain stopped. Instead, I just imagined you wandering along the trail by the river’s edge, staring into the murky rush.
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I met a man. It was during the winter months leading up to spring 1994. It wasn’t that type of meeting-a-guy situation, it was purely business, and for the sake of art.
I was twenty-two years old and had been dancing professionally for about four years. I was part of a dance company that performed traditional dances from the African diaspora.
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Dear Mom,
As you know, I’ve been wearing glasses since kindergarten. Even though Dad is always trying to get me to take them off for picture taking, you’ll see I’ve managed to keep them on in almost every photo. In my developmental years my glasses were a part of my identity. I was that girl with the ponytail and glasses. I revelled in being identifiable, as if my glasses gave me a reputation.
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Dearest You,
I need to peel off my flesh. Just a small slit on the wrist to get things started, then slice it back like puckered chicken skin with a paring knife and fry it in a pan.
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Home birth sounds so
Homey! Sweet! Safe from fear!
What a welcome, to bouncing baby
Who will arrive through legs, in arms, home
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I am the keeper of the dreams and the memories, the matrix where the generations converge, the record-book held between familial bookends. I am responsible for passing her life on to him that she may continue to live and that he may understand the consequences of history and culture.
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It’s Tuesday 23rd January 2001 and I don’t want to go to school. Today is a different day from the ones that have gone before. Every day since Saturday has been a different day from the ones that have gone before.
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I heard the words, but they had never really registered. “Remember, no sleep for two year!” my boss warned when I shared the news of my second pregnancy with him.
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Some people ask how I became a world traveler. I guess I got it from my mother. She never told us to be curious or seek out new places, but she made anything possible.
I was the youngest of six kids. My dad left to marry our neighbor five doors down when I was in second grade, so though he was nearby, he wasn’t part of my everyday life. He belonged to my best friend now.
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Kids have a way of helping you see things clearly. Maybe because they consume so much of your time and energy until all that remains are the essentials? I don’t know how it works, but I know that shortly after the birth of my son, my old dream of becoming a writer suddenly became important to me.
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Dear Mom,
I'm enjoying a cigarette on my rooftop. I'm sorry that, as an all knowing thirteen-year-old, I told you how to live. It's funny how much changes in ten years. The older I get the more I understand your stress and anxiety. I remember watching you and thinking, "Why can't you just be strong for me?"
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It’s a filthy place, the inside of his mind, but I’ve forced myself to wade through the sewage of his thoughts.
He followed me for a block, waiting until we were somewhere with less traffic.
I am cerebral person, I have to think about things, rationalize them, untangle them, for a long time after they happen. Even if it’s torture. Even if it’s pointless.
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If you met me now, you probably wouldn’t think I was the sort of girl who allowed boys to walk over her and treat her like shit. You might not even think I was the sort of girl who liked boys. With cropped hair and flannel shirts, I’ve done all I can to deter men from taking an interest. But a few years ago, when my hair was long and curly and my self-esteem was pretty much at rock bottom, I let a series of men trample over my self-worth.
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