all the girls i could have been are waiting in the bathroom
the girl in the first mirror gets out.
she moves to a city where nobody knows her,
cuts her hair in a bathroom with better lighting,
learns to order coffee without rehearsing first.
she has a little apartment
with a kitchen window and a plant she keeps alive
through something other than guilt.
she owns matching plates.
she has opinions about olive oil.
she has never once had to ask
whether someone is mad at her
because they used a full stop instead of a heart.
she wears lipstick to buy groceries.
not because anyone will see her,
but because she has decided
that being alive is a sufficient occasion.
i think i would like her.
i think i would also find her incredibly annoying.
the girl in the second mirror gets famous
for something she hasn't done yet.
she is interviewed about her childhood
and says something devastatingly articulate
about the classroom fan
and the particular sadness of august.
people underline her sentences.
someone puts one on pinterest
over a photograph of a girl looking out a train window,
and for once the girl in the photograph
is not me.
she has a book deal.
she has a little following of people
who think they understand her.
she does not check whether anyone has viewed her story
seven times in eleven minutes.
she has, apparently, transcended this.
i hope she has at least one embarrassing secret.
the girl in the third mirror
has already lost everyone.
she wears earrings.
she has learned to say we should catch up sometime
without meaning it as a prayer.
she has a favourite wine glass,
though she doesn't drink wine in it.
she puts water in it and calls it a ritual.
she tells people that school was a beautiful time
in the way people call a place beautiful
after they've stopped having to live there.
i hate her a little.
the girl in the fourth mirror
has a boyfriend who remembers things.
not the important things.
the small, almost stupid things.
how she peels the label off a bottle
until there is nothing left but glue.
how she says she's not hungry
and then steals three of his fries.
how she pretends to understand films
when she is mostly watching the people
watching the films.
he knows when she is quiet because she is happy
and when she is quiet because she has begun
to invent seventeen reasons
why everyone secretly dislikes her.
i don't know where this girl came from.
i don't even know if i want her.
sometimes i think i want to be loved
more than i want to love someone,
and sometimes i think that makes me selfish,
and sometimes i think i am fifteen
and should be allowed to be selfish
about something other than the last piece of chocolate.
the girl in the fifth mirror
has become beautiful in the way i have always imagined.
i am not going to describe her face.
that would be boring.
she has simply stopped checking it
in every reflective surface she passes.
she doesn't take forty-seven photographs
and then choose the one where she looks
like she wasn't trying to be looked at.
she doesn't zoom in on a picture
her friend posted of them together
and wonder if her smile looks strange.
she doesn't ask the mirror
if it thinks she is enough.
actually, this girl might be lying.
i hope she is.
i would hate for her to become one of those people
who has figured everything out
and therefore has nothing interesting to say.
outside the bathroom,
someone is laughing so hard
they've forgotten to be embarrassed.
someone is borrowing a pen
they will never return.
someone is trying to get a boy's attention
by being especially mean to him,
which is a terrible system
and has nevertheless survived for centuries.
someone has brought a new lip gloss
and is passing it around like a sacred object.
we lean toward the mirror in a row,
four girls with our mouths open,
trying to apply it without getting it
on our teeth.
one of us says we look like we've been eating oil.
we laugh until the gloss goes crooked.
i think this is what i will miss.
not the uniforms.
not the exams.
not the way the classroom smells
when it rains and forty people have come in
with wet shoes.
i will miss the people who have seen me
with lip gloss on my front teeth
and told me before i could embarrass myself
in front of someone whose opinion
i have decided matters far too much.
i will miss knowing who to look at
when something funny happens.
i will miss the silent conversations
that take place across a classroom
while someone is explaining something
none of us will remember after the test.
i will miss being able to say
look at her
and having someone know exactly who i mean.
next year, we will go to different schools.
or different cities.
or the same city and different lives.
we will promise to meet every weekend
with the confidence of people
who have never had to coordinate
six separate schedules and one mother's permission.
we will say we won't change.
we will mean it.
that is the worst part.
we will mean it so sincerely
that i almost believe we can make it true.
i have begun collecting evidence.
photographs of us at lunch,
most of them blurry because someone moved.
screenshots of conversations
that are not particularly funny anymore
unless you remember what happened before them.
a receipt from a day i don't remember
until i look at it.
a little note folded into my pencil case.
someone's handwriting on the back of my notebook.
a song that will probably ruin me
in a grocery store ten years from now.
i keep these things as if the future
is a very rude burglar
and i can trick it by hiding things in drawers.
sometimes i take photographs
of things that haven't happened yet.
the last day of school.
the empty classroom.
the desks pushed together
after everyone has gone home.
my friends in uniforms
we will probably never wear again.
i take pictures of their faces
when they are not looking at me.
i don't know what i am trying to prove.
that they were here?
that i was?
that we existed in the same small place
at the same impossible time
and did not know how lucky we were?
the girl in the sixth mirror
has a university acceptance letter
and a passport full of countries
she used to point at on maps.
she has learned three languages
and how to cook something other than instant noodles.
she has a room with a door she can close
and a life that belongs to her.
she is ambitious.
she is good at what she does.
she has made something of herself.
i am very proud of her.
i also want to ask
if she remembers the girl who got her here.
the one who stayed awake making plans
and then couldn't wake up on time.
the one who wrote entire conversations
in her head and never had them.
the one who wanted to be extraordinary
but was secretly delighted
when someone saved her a seat.
the one who thought every new song
had been written specifically to explain her life.
the one who read a sentence on pinterest
at two in the morning
and decided she had never been understood
until a stranger with a beige profile picture
put six words over a photograph of the sea.
the one who wanted to be remembered
by people she hadn't even met yet.
the one who was afraid of becoming ordinary
and did not yet understand
how much of a life is made of ordinary things.
i ask the girl in the sixth mirror
whether we get there.
she says, where?
i don't know how to explain
that i mean everywhere.
i mean the city.
the book.
the room with the window.
the version of myself who knows what to do
when someone she loves begins to leave.
i mean a life big enough
to fit all the things i want.
i mean a life where wanting them
doesn't make me feel as though
i am already abandoning the things i have.
the girl in the seventh mirror
is crying.
she says it is because of her eyeliner.
it isn't.
she has received a message
that says we need to talk
and has already lived through the next six months
in the time it took to read it.
she is good at imagining disasters.
she is terrible at imagining that things
might turn out all right.
she wants to ask her friends
if they will still love her when they leave,
but this seems like a very embarrassing question
to ask people who are currently arguing
over whose turn it is to buy chips.
so she doesn't.
she fixes her eyeliner
and goes back outside.
i want to tell her something useful.
i want to tell her that people leave
for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
that some friendships survive distance
and some survive only as the shape
they leave in you.
that loving something does not make it permanent.
that nothing makes it permanent.
i want to tell her that she can do everything right
and still be standing in a room
where nobody knows the person she used to be.
but i am fifteen,
and the only advice i have ever been qualified to give
is which lip gloss is worth the money.
so i tell her she looks pretty.
she says, shut up.
i say, i'm serious.
she says, you're literally the worst.
and then she takes my hand
for half a second
before we go back to class.
i think i will remember that.
i think i will remember everything.
the bell rings.
someone knocks on the door
and asks if i'm coming.
all my possible futures
look at me expectantly.
the girl with the apartment.
the girl with the book deal.
the girl who is loved properly.
the girl who no longer needs to be beautiful
to believe she deserves to be seen.
the girl who has travelled everywhere
and the girl who has learned how to stay.
they all have things to tell me.
i wish i could ask them
whether we ever stop being afraid.
whether the people we love
will remember us correctly.
whether there is a point at which
we stop feeling that our real lives
are waiting somewhere just beyond our reach.
whether i will ever look at a photograph
of myself at fifteen
and feel tenderness instead of embarrassment.
whether i will forgive myself
for all the time i spent wishing
i were someone else.
instead, i wash my hands.
i fix my hair.
i reapply my lip gloss,
which has somehow migrated
almost entirely onto the inside of my water bottle.
i go back to class.
there is a girl at my desk
who has saved me half her chocolate.
she is telling me something about a boy.
she has reached the part of the story
where she says she doesn't even care,
which means she cares so much
that the rest of us have stopped eating
to listen.
i laugh so hard i nearly choke.
she calls me an idiot.
i tell her she is one to talk.
the teacher asks us to be quiet.
outside, the afternoon is doing
that golden thing it does
when the day is almost over
and nobody has thought to be grateful for it yet.
my friend slides the other half of her chocolate
across the desk.
i take it.
i think, very suddenly,
that i could stay here forever.
then i think that i would hate that, too.
i want to leave this place so badly
that sometimes i can feel my future
like a second heartbeat.
i want to go everywhere.
i want to meet people who will change my mind.
i want to write something that makes a stranger
stop in the middle of an ordinary afternoon
and feel less alone.
i want a room of my own.
i want a life that surprises me.
i want to become someone
i would have admired when i was younger.
i want to stay fifteen
for another five minutes.
i want my friends to stay fifteen, too.
i want the boy who sits two rows away
to keep laughing at the same stupid things.
i want the classroom fan to keep making that noise.
i want the girl who borrows my pens
to keep forgetting to return them.
i want everything to change.
i want nothing to change.
i want, i want, i want.
at fifteen, every inconvenience arrives
dressed as a prophecy,
and every goodbye is rehearsed
long before anyone has said it.
i am learning that i can love a thing
without knowing how long i get to keep it.
i am learning this very badly.
i still take photographs
of sunsets from the car window.
i still save songs
for people who will never hear them.
i still make plans for cities
i have never visited.
i still believe that one day
i will become someone unforgettable.
i just hope that, when i do,
i remember this girl.
the one with the crooked lip gloss
and the half-eaten chocolate.
the one who thought the world was waiting for her
and was right, in a way,
but not in the way she expected.
the one who was so busy trying to become
that she sometimes forgot
she already was.
the bell rings again.
someone says my name.
i turn around.
and there i am,
in the middle of my life,
not knowing yet
which parts i will spend the rest of it
trying to get back.
a small and entirely unreasonable religion
two months ago, we had too much to say.
this is the part i keep coming back to,
as though the beginning of something
might contain instructions for its ending.
we used to send each other songs
at hours when sensible people were asleep.
not even always good songs.
sometimes things with terrible lyrics
and a chorus that sounded like
a washing machine having a religious experience.
you would say, listen to this part.
i would listen to the entire song
three times before answering.
i have always been good at this.
taking a small thing someone gives me
and building a house around it.
a song becomes a room.
a sentence becomes a key.
someone remembers what i said last tuesday
and suddenly i am considering
whether the universe has a plan for me.
i know.
i am very difficult to live with.
we made a playlist together.
i don't remember who added the first song.
i remember being pleased
that you liked one i liked.
there was something almost embarrassing
about discovering that a person
could have a whole interior life
that sounded a little like mine.
i wanted to ask you everything.
what song would you play
if you had to explain yourself to a stranger?
what do you think happens
to all the things we almost say?
if you could live inside one afternoon forever,
which one would you choose?
would you rather be remembered
for something you did
or for the way someone felt around you?
also, do you think dinosaurs had eyebrows?
i would have asked you that last one
with complete seriousness.
you would have answered, probably.
you were good at answering me.
or perhaps i was simply good
at remembering when you did.
there is a difference
i have been trying not to learn.
i used to tell you things
before they had finished happening to me.
a sentence i found in a book.
a teacher doing something ridiculous.
a thought that arrived while i was brushing my teeth
and would be gone by the time i reached my room.
you were the person i thought of
when something happened.
this is a terrible thing to admit
because it sounds much more romantic
than it felt at the time.
at the time, it was ordinary.
i would pick up my phone
and there you were.
i would send something stupid
and you would make it worse
in exactly the right way.
we could spend twenty minutes
arguing about a completely useless question
and somehow i would come away
feeling as though the day had been worthwhile.
i did not know
that ordinary things could become evidence.
i did not know i was collecting it.
then, somewhere, you began to love someone else.
i say somewhere because there was no announcement
that the weather had changed.
no dramatic music.
no window flying open.
no sudden understanding
that i was standing at the beginning
of a very embarrassing story.
you were still you.
you still laughed at things.
you still had homework.
you still forgot things
and said things without thinking
and went about your life
as if you were allowed to.
which, of course, you were.
you had not promised me anything.
this is the sentence i use
when i am trying to be fair.
you had not promised me anything.
you were not mine.
i was not yours.
there was no agreement
i could hold up to the light
and accuse you of breaking.
you were simply a boy
who had once been very easy to talk to
and was now in love with someone else.
i wish this made it hurt less.
i wish the heart were a more reasonable organ,
something that could be shown a list of facts
and persuaded to behave.
instead, mine kept doing what it had always done.
it remembered your favourite songs.
it saved things to tell you.
it found your name in a crowded room
before i had decided to look for you.
it continued, for an unreasonable amount of time,
to mistake habit for hope.
the worst part is that you weren't cruel.
not in the way stories require.
you did not become a monster
so that i could become a better person.
you were thoughtless sometimes.
you answered a question
without noticing what it cost me to ask it.
you talked about her
with the unguarded happiness
of someone who has no idea
that another person is trying very hard
to look normal.
you were not trying to hurt me.
i know.
i keep knowing.
sometimes i think it would be easier
if you had meant to.
at least then i could be angry
without feeling guilty about it.
instead, i am left with this ridiculous situation
in which i can wish you happiness
and still feel a little sick
when you tell me about yours.
i can think she must be lovely
and wonder what she has
that i don't.
i can hate that question
and ask it anyway.
i can know that love is not a competition
and still want, for one deeply undignified second,
to have won.
i am fifteen.
i am allowed one or two terrible thoughts
before breakfast.
we don't talk anymore.
this is the part that sounds made up
when i say it out loud.
because two months ago,
the messages kept coming.
one thing became another thing
became a photograph
became a question
became a song
became a conversation that lasted
long after either of us had anything useful to say.
now i can go an entire day
without seeing your name.
the first time it happened,
i thought you were busy.
the second time, too.
after that, i became very interested
in how busy people can be.
i developed several theories.
one involved exams.
one involved the fact that everyone
has a life outside their phone.
one was simply that
you didn't want to talk to me anymore.
i disliked that theory so much
that i gave the others more time.
i have a talent for this.
i can turn a silence into a courtroom
and argue every side of the case
until i am both the accused
and the person asking for a verdict.
perhaps you think we are fine.
perhaps you haven't noticed
that our conversations have disappeared
the way water disappears from a glass
left beside an open window.
perhaps you have noticed
and don't know what to say.
perhaps i am the only person
who has been keeping count.
i don't know which possibility is worse.
i keep opening our chat
as if something might have changed
since the last time i looked.
there is a message i could send.
something funny.
something about a song.
something that would give you
an easy way back into the conversation.
i write it in my head
while brushing my teeth.
i rewrite it on the bus.
i imagine you answering
and then imagine you not answering
and then become annoyed with myself
for having invented an entire afternoon
around a message i haven't sent.
do you know how humiliating it is
to have an imaginary argument
with someone who is not even thinking about you?
i would like to file a complaint.
with whom, i am not sure.
god, perhaps.
although i have never been particularly religious,
and lately i have begun to suspect
that if there is a god,
he has a very poor understanding
of teenage girls and their playlists.
i have made a small religion out of almosts.
almost telling you something.
almost asking what changed.
almost admitting that i liked you
in the way that makes ordinary things
feel personally arranged by the universe.
i have prayed over typing bubbles.
i have mistaken a notification
for a small act of mercy.
i have treated a song appearing on shuffle
like a message from a higher power.
i have, on several occasions,
looked at the time you were last online
and then closed my phone
as if i had done something dignified.
there is no dignity in this.
there is, however, a great deal of material
for a future poem.
i hope you appreciate that.
the playlist is still there.
i listen to it almost every day.
sometimes i put it on while doing homework
and discover that i have read the same paragraph
six times without absorbing a single word.
sometimes it plays in the background
while i am getting ready,
and i stand in front of the mirror
with one earring in
and my lip gloss uncapped
and forget what i was doing.
sometimes a song comes on
and i am suddenly back in a conversation
that no longer exists.
i remember what we said.
i remember what i wanted to say.
i remember being so pleased
that you were there to hear it.
i remember a version of my life
in which telling you something
was as easy as having the thought.
i don't skip the songs.
this is either bravery
or a spectacular failure of judgement.
i haven't decided.
i could delete the playlist.
i could remove every song
and make the whole thing disappear
in the clean, decisive way
people in films seem to manage.
i could decide that i have better things to do
than listen to music
that reminds me of a boy
who is busy being in love with someone else.
i could do many things.
instead, i learn the words.
i learn which song comes after which.
i learn how long the silence lasts
between the last track and the next.
i learn that there are some songs
i can listen to without thinking of you
and some that still know exactly where to find me.
i don't know what to do
with the fact that something can be mine
and remind me of someone else
at the same time.
perhaps that is what growing up is.
discovering that not everything you love
will belong to one clean category.
a song can be yours
even if someone else introduced you to it.
a memory can be precious
even if it has stopped being happy.
a person can have mattered
without being meant to stay.
i hate how sensible all of this sounds.
i would rather the universe
give me a more interesting explanation.
something involving constellations.
a curse.
a minor administrative error in heaven.
anything but the possibility
that we were good at talking
until we weren't.
anything but the possibility
that something can end
without either person being bad.
i have been reading about the stars lately.
did you know that some of the light
we see has been travelling for years
before it reaches us?
i think about this sometimes.
how a thing can be far away
and still arrive.
how something can have ended
long before you realise
you are looking at its last light.
i think this is beautiful.
i also think it is deeply unfair
that the universe gets to be poetic
about distance
while i have to be normal about it.
i still want to tell you things.
that is the part i am most embarrassed by.
not that i liked you.
not even that i still miss talking to you.
it is the small, ordinary persistence of it.
i see something funny
and my first thought is you.
i read a sentence
and wonder whether you would like it.
i hear a song
and want to know what you would say
about the second verse.
then i remember.
the remembering is becoming automatic now.
it arrives before the feeling does,
a small hand on my shoulder.
not him.
not anymore.
i am learning to put the thought somewhere else.
i send the song to a friend.
i write the sentence in my notebook.
i tell the story at lunch
and make everyone laugh.
sometimes i even forget
that i had meant to tell you.
these are small victories.
i am trying not to turn them
into a religion, too.
the strange thing is,
i still want you to be happy.
not in the noble, beautiful way
people write about in books.
i want you to be happy
because you are a person i know.
because i remember how you laugh
when something catches you off guard.
because once, when i had a bad day,
you made it less bad
without knowing you were doing it.
because the world is already full of people
who have never been kind to me,
and i don't want to make you one of them
just because you couldn't love me.
but i also want to be happy.
i want to stop checking my phone
like it owes me an explanation.
i want to listen to a song
and hear the song.
i want to stop treating the past
as if it were a place i could return to
if i remembered the directions correctly.
i want to fall in love with other things.
a book that makes me miss my stop.
a sentence that follows me for days.
a city i have never seen.
the smell of rain on the school grounds.
a sunflower growing much taller
than anyone expected it to.
i want to be so busy becoming myself
that one day i realise
i have gone an entire afternoon
without wondering what you think of me.
i want a life that is not smaller
because you are no longer standing in it
the way you used to.
i want to become someone
who can remember this without flinching.
not because it was nothing.
because it was something.
because for a little while,
you were a person i told things to.
because for a little while,
i thought of you
when the world did something worth mentioning.
because i liked you.
because i almost fell in love with you.
because i came back from it,
though not all at once,
and not without bringing a few songs home.
the playlist is still there.
i listen to it almost every day.
maybe one day i will forget
which songs were yours
and which ones were mine.
maybe one day
i will hear the first few seconds of a song
and think only of the afternoon,
the weather,
the window beside my bed.
maybe i will even send it to someone else
without wondering
what it would have meant
if i had sent it to you.
for now, i let it play.
i do my homework badly.
i put on my lip gloss.
i make plans for cities i have never visited.
i read a sentence on pinterest
and decide it has changed my life.
i am still fifteen.
there are still so many things
i have not fallen in love with yet.
and tomorrow,
when the playlist begins again,
i will probably listen.
not because i am waiting for you.
not entirely.
some songs are allowed to outlive
the people who introduced us to them.
some things can be beautiful
without being a sign.
some almosts are only almosts.
i am trying to let that be enough.
i am trying to let myself be enough,
too.
instructions for leaving the light on
dear future me,
first of all,
i hope we are rich.
not obscenely rich.
just rich enough to buy the expensive strawberries
without performing a small financial audit
in the supermarket aisle.
i hope we have a bookshelf
that reaches the ceiling
and a window that lets the afternoon in
without asking permission.
i hope we live somewhere interesting.
somewhere with little streets
that turn unexpectedly into other little streets,
somewhere the buildings have been standing
long enough to acquire secrets.
somewhere nobody knows
what i was like in class ten.
actually, i hope someone does.
i hope i have at least one person
who remembers the exact sound of my laugh
before i learned to make it smaller.
i hope she can tell when i'm pretending
not to care about something.
i hope she still tells me.
there are a few things
i need to ask you.
did we get into the university?
did we ever learn how to drive
without imagining six different ways
the car might end up in a ditch?
did we become the kind of person
who can walk into a room
without rehearsing the first sentence?
did we ever write something
that made a stranger feel less alone?
did we get the haircut?
please tell me we got the haircut.
i have been thinking about it for months
and have yet to make a single responsible decision.
also, are we still listening to the same songs?
this is important.
i need to know whether you still listen
to the ones that made us feel
as though somebody had broken into our bedroom,
read our diary,
and set the entire thing to music.
i need to know whether Harry Styles
still sounds like a person
who could convince us to forgive the world
for approximately three minutes and forty seconds.
i need to know whether there is a new song
we have decided was written specifically for us.
there had better be.
i hope you still fall in love with things.
i hope you still read a sentence
and have to put the book down
because something in it has found you
in a way you weren't prepared for.
i hope you still underline entire paragraphs
and then complain that you have no space left
to write your own thoughts.
i hope you still buy books
because you like the title
and sometimes because the cover is pretty.
i hope you still have opinions
about fictional characters
that you defend with the seriousness
of a lawyer protecting an innocent person.
i hope you still cry at films
and insist that you are only tired.
i hope you still look out of car windows
as if the world might suddenly reveal
what it has been trying to tell you.
i hope you still stop to look at things
nobody asked you to notice.
a sunflower growing through a crack in the pavement.
a dog asleep beneath a parked scooter.
the sky turning the colour of a peach
over a building you have passed a thousand times.
i hope you still believe
that the ordinary world
is hiding something extraordinary
just beneath its skin.
i hope you have not become
the sort of person who calls the moon impractical.
i have met adults like that.
they are very concerned about parking spaces
and have apparently never considered
that the universe is expanding.
i do not want to become one of them.
speaking of adults,
i hope you have become one
without becoming unbearable.
i hope you know how to pay bills
and cook something that isn't noodles.
i hope you can make appointments
without postponing them until they become
a problem for a future version of yourself.
i hope you have stopped saying
after boards
as if class ten were a magical doorway
behind which all your problems
have agreed to wait patiently.
i hope you know that it isn't.
there will be other exams.
other deadlines.
other things you will be convinced
you must get right the first time.
there will be days
when you wake up and feel
as though you have somehow fallen behind
everyone who started running before you.
please remember
that nobody gave us a map.
we have been making things up
since the beginning.
we made up a personality
out of books and songs
and things people said about us.
we made up a future
out of photographs of cities
we had never visited.
we made up entire conversations
with people who were not in the room.
we made up a religion out of almosts
and then acted surprised
when the prayers went unanswered.
we were very young.
we were also very dramatic.
i hope you still are, a little.
i hope you have learned
that not every feeling needs to become
the most important thing that has ever happened.
but i hope you have not learned
to treat your feelings
as if they are embarrassing guests
who have arrived without an invitation.
let them in.
give them water.
you do not have to build them a house.
you do not have to let them stay forever.
just don't make them stand outside
because somebody once told you
that wanting too much was unbecoming.
i hope you are kinder to yourself now.
i hope you don't inspect photographs
as if they contain evidence
of something you did wrong.
i hope you have stopped asking
whether your face looks strange
when you laugh.
i hope you have learned
that a bad photograph
is not a prophecy.
i hope you wear the clothes
you keep saving for an occasion.
i hope you use the perfume
on an ordinary tuesday.
i hope you stop waiting
until you are more beautiful,
more accomplished,
more certain,
more anything,
to let yourself be seen.
there is no final version of you
waiting at the end of all this
with perfect hair
and a comprehensive understanding
of why everything happened.
there is no day
when you wake up and discover
that you have become someone
who never needs reassurance.
there is no certificate
for having survived adolescence
without being ridiculous.
thank god.
we would never qualify.
i hope you still have friends.
i know.
i know this is a strange thing to ask
when there are so many other things
i could put in a letter to the future.
but i have been thinking about it lately.
how one day we will stop seeing
the same people every morning.
how the girl who sits beside me
might become someone i wish i could call
while standing in the middle of a supermarket
trying to remember which cereal she likes.
how the people who know my school self
will eventually become people
who know stories about my school self.
how there will be birthdays
we cannot attend
and photographs we will not be in
and entire afternoons
that happen without us.
i know this is normal.
i hate that it is normal.
i hope we stay friends
with the people who knew us
before we learned how to introduce ourselves
to the world.
i hope we make new friends, too.
i hope we meet someone
who has read the same book
and underlined a completely different sentence.
i hope we meet people
who disagree with us
in ways that make the world bigger.
i hope we are brave enough
to be a beginner again.
i hope we remember
that leaving a place
does not mean we have to hate it.
that growing up
does not mean we have to be ashamed
of the person we were.
that we can miss something
without needing to return to it.
that we can love someone
and still become a person
whose life is not organised around them.
that a song can stop hurting
without becoming meaningless.
that sometimes a thing ends
and the ending is not a punishment.
i am trying to believe these things.
i am writing them down
because i think you might need them.
or perhaps i am writing them down
because i need them now
and it is easier to give advice
to someone who doesn't exist yet.
you have always been
a convenient person to talk to.
i wonder what you look like.
not your face.
i know approximately what your face looks like.
it is mine, probably,
with a few more years around the eyes
and better decisions about eyebrows.
i mean, what does your life look like?
is there a mug you always use?
is there a book beside your bed
that you keep meaning to finish?
do you have a favourite street
you take the long way home to walk down?
do you have a person
you tell things to before they have
finished happening to you?
do you ever think about me?
i wonder if you remember
the girl who wrote this letter.
the one who wanted to be unforgettable
before she had figured out
what she wanted to be remembered for.
the one who made lists
of places she wanted to visit
and things she wanted to write
and people she wanted to become.
the one who thought
that if she could just become extraordinary enough,
nobody would ever have a reason to leave.
i hope you have forgiven her for that.
i hope you understand
that she was not trying to be difficult.
she was trying to make a promise
the world had never made to her.
that everything she loved
would stay.
i hope you know
that she loved you, too.
even before she knew who you were.
especially before she knew who you were.
she wanted you to have everything.
the city.
the books.
the window.
the people who would know you correctly.
the life that would make you feel
as though you had finally arrived somewhere.
she wanted you to be happy.
she just didn't know
that you could be happy
and still miss her.
so, here are the instructions.
buy the expensive strawberries sometimes.
call your sister.
tell your friends you love them
while they are still standing in front of you.
send the song.
write the poem.
wear the ridiculous earrings.
go to the city.
come home if you want to.
leave the light on.
not because somebody is definitely coming back.
not because you are waiting for a person
to choose you.
leave it on because you live here.
because there will be evenings
when you come home tired
and need to see the little square of light
beneath the door.
because there will be mornings
when the future feels so enormous
you cannot find a place to put your feet.
because you deserve to return
to a place that has made room for you.
and if you ever forget
how to be astonished,
go somewhere you have never been.
take the wrong street.
order something you cannot pronounce.
look up.
let the world be large
without deciding that you must become
larger than it to deserve a place in it.
i hope you are doing well.
i hope you are doing badly sometimes, too,
in the ordinary ways that mean
you are still living a life.
i hope you have people to call.
i hope you have things to look forward to.
i hope you have made mistakes
that no longer embarrass you.
i hope you have made mistakes
that still make you laugh.
i hope there are things
you haven't figured out yet.
i hope you are still becoming.
and if you are not where you thought
you would be by now,
if the book hasn't been written,
if the city hasn't been reached,
if the life is not yet extraordinary,
please don't look at me
as if i have failed you.
i am trying.
i am trying to get us there.
but i am also trying to notice
the life we have while we are here.
the girl saving me chocolate.
the song coming through my headphones.
the ridiculous thing my sister said
that i will repeat for years.
the sky outside the classroom window.
the fact that i am fifteen
and the world is very large
and i am very, very busy
wanting to see it.
i have spent so long
trying to become someone unforgettable
that i have not always noticed
how much there is to remember.
so, future me,
if you are reading this
in a room i have never seen,
please think of me kindly.
i am still learning how to live
in a life that will not wait
until i am ready.
i am still learning
that the light can be left on
without knowing who will come home.
i am still learning
that the future is not a person
who will arrive and tell me
whether i did everything correctly.
it is just another morning.
another song.
another ordinary thing
i might not know i will miss
until it is gone.
and tomorrow,
i will wake up
and try again.
please tell me
you still do, too.
