Dear September 24, 2022, 

I hope you’re getting this in time. This letter has been long overdue. 

Even in the midst of summer, I couldn’t stop thinking of you. Just a month ago, sunscreen slathered and bug bitten, I pretended to indulge in freedom—in fantasy. I soaked in lake water until it reached my bloodstream, let the searing sun melt off whatever collected over the colder months. I buried the impending panic beneath hot sand at the beach and drowned in late nights. But, eventually, it all resurfaces. The air is getting colder; you’re sending your signal. So this is me practising honesty. Putting pen to paper—fishing the words out of me no matter the damage they do on the way out. 

I admire you—I wish I could be you. I crave your burning, bleeding colours. All warm, red, and lucid. I don’t know how you do it—manage to look that beautiful when you’re slowly fading, dying, inevitably changing. When I do it, I look tragic; pathetic. The colour of a blooming bruise, horrifically violet and blue, muting into a rotten yellow. I want to swap pallets. I want to be beautiful. I want Mother Nature to morph me until I’m unrecognisable. 

I still find myself studying you to the point of obsession. My neck aches from staring up at your raging hue and the way it spreads like wildfire across trees. Melting street by street and leaving a scorch on everything you touch—a trail tracing back to no particular starting point. 

I’m incomparable to that. I leave the footprint of a ghost in my wake. I want to know I’m capable of being more than this. I am more than a girl pretending to be a woman. I am more than a child in clothes with sleeves and pant legs that reach the floor. I can stretch further than the corners of my room. I want to plague the world with one big sweep of my arm—just like you. 

I’ve been trying to mirror your terror and allure. But with every attempt I make a bigger fool of myself. I reveal my truest, cruellest form. I exist as an open ended question. An animal that preys upon answers. A body run with blood of silent letters and built with bones of convoluted metaphors. I’ll always look at myself confused, my reflection warped. I will always keep rewriting myself. And you? You will always be understood. 

You haunt me with the force of a childhood memory. I’m covetous of your romance, your catharsis, your desirability. I want to turn myself over a thousand times until I lose direction so fate can take the lead. I want to untether myself from control and be ravenous. I want you to possess me, and make me unforgettable.