Maybe I was created the moment a letter was set inside a mailbox 21 years ago or 40 or 200. Maybe I was a telegram. A piece of paper. Reincarnated ink. Perhaps in my last life I swished around, bled through paper, had a feather at the top of me. Maybe in my dreams I bounce around through cursive loops, soaking up their literature, their written love. Maybe I get so frustrated when my name is spelled with an 'ie' instead of 'y' because I feel so permanently that I am written. And so spell me right. Maybe each of my bones was created at the click click clank of a type-writer. 206 letters pushed down and here I am. 54 and there go both my hands. Maybe the jump-jacking heart bounces as it does when I open a mailbox because only then am I home. That red flag as my mother. wooden post as my father. Sealed envelope as my body, stamps for palms. Sticky strip you lick to press down the triangle as my skin. The paper as my oxygen and words as my soul. Eyes written as two addresses and the post office's marked date as my head. P.S. write back for shoulders and punctuation as freckles. handwriting for hair and signed with Love and a name as my belief. Maybe I am a letter. Please tell me I am a letter. I had to write in order to figure out how I landed here.

The first afternoon

Oftentimes I hear the train clicking by from the Eastside. The sun is hot hot and Ellie is sitting by me on the bright porch. Hot hot like lying in the grass with only the dirt to cool you. It's popsicles and short dresses and feet dipping in rivers. It won't last but I'll write you for as long as it does. It's pale feet bronzing and plants shaking their leaves as if it is their very first morning. It feels like the first afternoon the world has ever had. I am drinking spicy orange tea to stay winter warm. I am writing to you with my grateful energy. I adored your unfinished letters. I do a similar thing with people. I just happen to write you my complete thoughts. I would think it stems from not feeling overwhelmed when I think of you or writing to you. Sharing the same wall for so long created a protecting force inside our relationship. I think we tacked prints, tapestries, Christmas lights on it. Candle scent and incense soaked into it. Heartbreak, frustration rain-induced sadness, egg burritos, shoes, leggings, alarms going off shoved inside it. Maybe this paper is our wall. Maybe walls hold the same platform over two people's heads rather than dividing them.

Existing in another’s heart and hands

Letters are a way to send yourself to a place, returned or freshly invited. Your words opened in Yorkshire air. On a Thai beach. A Swiss street. An Indiana garage. A French mailbox. British postbox. A piece of paper from my hands to yours. The scent, shade of string, dried flower or cut out image. You are here and there at the same time. Existing in another’s heart once again. You don’t have to permanently leave anywhere as long as the postal system continues to deliver. You can write a long paragraph full of sentences that lack punctuation and go on and on spilling your thoughts about trees and sun rays and depression and sundaes and Sundays. You can write “I miss you like I do fireflies” and seal it for Ohio. You could send a photo, a snippet, a comic, an I-should-be-listening-to- this-lecture-but-instead-I-drew-this-for-you image. So what is a letter? Something enclosed in an envelope. An envelope is something that closes. Vague definitions with slight holes but you get the point. Do whatever you can with words. Please write your grandparents back. Send a love letter to your down-the-street partner. Leave a note for your housemate hidden in their most frequented spot. Communicate with paper. why? Because it will help you breathe better. I heard once that we should aim to take 100 deep breaths a day. Sending a letter is equivalent to sixty-eight.

A letter to Danville, Kentucky

Dear JT,

I do not recall what idea of words was buzzing in my mind when I asked for your address, but there it sat in my inbox, KY gleaming with its uniqueness, so I wrote it on an envelope at last. what are your favorite parts of your Danville days? Any Kentucky catastrophes lately? PBR tastes so badly that I poured it out onto the sidewalk last night. Stouts please. what was strange~ Cole, Than, you and me standing in a bar talking. Aren't we impostors? Does it make any sense we are sipping in bars? Some flap in the universe skipped us forward perhaps. Twenty-one feels or sounds like the youngest age I have ever been. A childish ring. Legal. Spring Break. Vodka. Those are words I associate with it. How do you think of life lately? what mood(s) do you typically rise from bed with? I am curious about old friends' thoughts and mental places. Do you miss straw berries? Aching for summer? when's the last time you touched a soccer ball? Do you miss your family today? How often do your hands write things down?

A letter to his parent's house

Things pile up or they don't. I was on my way to a gallery on the University of Washington campus when I saw a bookstore. Used and beautiful. I sat on its cold tiles and read The Bradbury Chronicles which is about his life written by a man named Sam. Also I looked at other Bradbury books because the illustrated paperback covers are always curious and pretty. I never made it to the gallery and I don't regret it still. All I think about is the sun warming up feet recently out of a river. Or how hot a sunflower field is. There was a summer that lasted a few years where all I wanted was a lemonade stand with you or wade and Jami or another friend. It seemed like something fun for teenagers who still remembered being children. Street fairs. The fields at Blues Fest. Always missing a friend and never being able to catch up with them. Speed or attention. Cedar or sage or sweet grass. A person burned lavender the other week but it didn't resemble lavender, only a dead burning stem. what if we could burn something that trickled glitter into the air? what if Santa Fe turns into a mirage before I get there? what if I met a boy whose house is elevated by three trees and he played intoxicating music, mostly Irish? And the next morning after barely sleep we walked to a stream and I found a rock and said, "doesn't this look like a bird egg?" and he nodded and said yes. My friend from Colorado and my London-found friend know me well. Toronto. You and I discuss a lot of trips together. Or I make a faraway idea in my head and tell it to you and say, "you should come along. I want to do this thing" and for a second we both light up. I spotted two foxes two nights ago. Bright orange and midnight. Good omens. They are them. Skin around my spine never knowing how to sit. what does your mouth feel like lately I am wondering. wandering in nowhere days. This week I want to stay here. Trying to sweat that feeling out. inking it out. without thinking, your house. Your bold constellations overhead. Cat door. word games with your family and girlfriend on the floor. tea bags into mugs. guacamole. Could I write a letter without it being obvious I miss you?

Connection through Letters (Email to Sage)

Letters. I tried to talk about letters in the beginning but didn't so I'll do so now. If I can. Letters are everything and I try and explain to those unaccustomed to sending them that they can be anything. I swear to them their three sentences are the world. I send a lot of letters. My mom makes paper and last summer I helped her and I have so much and I love to write on it. I love to make envelopes and at the Evergreen Craft Fair I sold letter- writing kits. First time. I love first times that feel addicting, forcing you to create things for a second. I sold maybe two and traded most of the remainders. I loved the people I met, so interested and at home. So happy this other person loves words and addresses and pens and ribbon to tie tie bows with. If I could re-arrange the universe so I spent most of my days writing thoughts and assembling images to people, then I would likely love myself and the world more.

A heart split six ways (A letter to Roxy)

Thank you so so so much for such an incredibly beautiful presentation of words. I am still speechless revisiting it. And a month passes before I write back! So sorry for keeping you wondering. (How could someone not write back to something so graceful? How can anyone stand not to answer every letter?) Alas, I am glad we discovered the existence of each other, lovers of words on paper and pretty colors. when I am not writing letters, I am cooking or organizing. I am thinking of my little brothers. Or wondering if this cat will stop meowing. I am remembering Brazil and planning trips. Flights. Missing; I spend a tremendous amount of time feeling the absence of loved ones, hilarious friends, safe beds, naked woods. I have a heart split six ways. One part placed in each place I’ve lived: Indiana, Ohio, Brazil, Washington, France and England. I’m not sure how many ways a heart can divide itself. And if anyone’s going to find out, it’s me. The most familiar is arriving. The most painful is leaving but staying would always be worse. Maybe that’s a flaw in my belief system, but I feel in order to learn, I must move. Sending love on paper from the next place to the last.

On the Emotional Urgency / Addiction to the written word

It's been eight years since my grandpa died. I sat with my grandma in the Starbucks at the corner and talked for two hours. I always knew my grandpa was a writer, but today I finally asked questions. when did the first poem come? Did she ever write back? Did she pay particular attention to sentences? were certain letters her favorites? was there a last letter? She said there was, but he didn't know it was to be his final one. She said after he died, she searched the whole house up and down in search of one. A scrap of paper, a letter, one last scribbled thought. She wanted more than anything to freshly read something he wrote. She searched the margins of the books he had been reading. She was in a state of devastation when it came time to sell the house. There could have always been a letter there, somewhere.

Another’s collection of me

A dim room in Cincinnati, Ohio too big for his own good. we were lying in his bed. I felt lonely and I could feel his loneliness. It loomed and I cried. He was almost asleep. He had no energy to talk me through it. He was usually helpless or overly confident, neither offering comfort. I asked if I could look at a letter I'd sent from Brazil. He said yes and told me they were all in a drawer. I sat on the floor and opened my heart back up. Scraps of sidewalk comic strips, love letters, documentations of longing. All in one place! How it offended me...saddened, confused. They didn't belong there. I was writing to him, not a drawer. First experience witnessing another's collection of me.

Fixing winter (A letter to Nancy)

The tiniest card for the biggest heart! A friend love letter of sorts…It’s the middle of the night in January. I write from atop a box in a scattered room placed inside the rain capitol of the world. I love your eyeliner, glitter. Your excitement, your rawness. I love how curly your brown hair lives, and the pounding in your heart that’s freshly stepped inside a new city. I love that you write me letters and that we barely know each other. but in another way we know each other vey well and it’s indescribable. Something must fix January. This is my attempt at fixing winter. I want all the poison out. Send a tiny or big sentence. Fix January. Love you like floral skirts. You can trust that. <3 Sady

Letters for Sanity

So the way I stay sane is letters! They help me remain in all those places. They are the fireplace in rainy January. They are the hand holding yours when there’s nobody. They are the best friend from high school who is usually too depressed to talk to you. They help ease the thing you thought you needed leaving. They bring back magic, swift foxes from London. They are yoga, hiking, tea, prayer all in one. Letters are salvation and that is the biggest truth I’ve learned.

"Adams was right: to require perfection is to invite paralysis" (David Bayles and Ted Orland 30)

Dearest Paralysis,

You're invited to my life. I'm so glad you could make it. I love holding my breath for three whole minutes after I read something aloud. I love the wait. I love the vocalized approval required to feel proud. I love when you curl up in my stomach and send internal goose bumps throughout my limbs, from my spine to my toes, my fingers, they tap, and a runny nose. Playing freeze tag with myself, I love it. I could never be above it, above you. Oh Paralysis, are you cozy? Need any tea, a hot shower? Feel like fucking off any time soon? Oh Paralysis, I'm kidding. I can see we have work to do. I'll stand paralyzed and make you proud. You make my throat suddenly scratchy before reading so I know you're working. Help me stumble over words that sounded so perfectly at home. I didn't invite you for nothing! I have plenty other friends: paranoia, self-doubt, ego, insecurity. They all need me, you see. And if I were to provide an analysis of why I chose you tonight, paralysis, well it'd be something about your two As and two Ss. They lead me to confessions. I made a barter. I was gifted the unbalancing act of needing perfection, the rereading my letters to the point of memorization, the did you read my email did you read my email so did you see my email what did you think? Well that's great you like it, but which parts did you hate? A grammar mistake! No, that's your opinion, that's impossible, that doesn't happen. A barter. The unfriendly banter. I traded this miraculous mania for you, paralysis. We are bound together forever. You help me freeze inside some moments when I open the cracks of my mouth. You help me freeze as soon as the seal has been licked. You make my heart race for a week; make me sick, as the post office stalls in delivery. Convenience. Your arrival, it's helpful, so timely. I can't help but like you. Look, I'm smiling. I've been doing all this writing and reading, sharing and sending. Who deserves to feel peaceful? There could never be enough reassurance after a piece. Who do I think I am? Thank you, paralysis, for keeping me in check, for keeping me in good hands.

Love from your most loyal fan, Sady

P.S. Please write back. You might not because the letter wasn't evocative enough or my cursive-print combination caused irritation or the stamp was outdated or you're simply too busy to write back to dreamy wannabees like me. Or run on sentences, maybe you hate them. Rhyme. Alliteration. So obvious, even when it's slanted. A childish letter. This was ridiculous. I'll tear it up, I'll re-write it. What’s this sensation? I call it: artfully searching for perfection. No such thing. Paralyzed, I can't breathe.

To love you like literature

maybe my lips taste like cinnamon, all the places I’ve been sunlight and rivers all the rain falling off London rooftops conversations and foreign languages glitter, ginger and mint leaves. what if I collect tastes from every place I leave?

I bet yours are guitar strings summer picnics campfires winter walks and crickets star anise and pastel strings humming and Christmas eve maybe your lips are the taste of words your tongue sentences your neck questions what if you feel better than my favorite pen?

Irish induced romance

Dearest Ben,

Oh how beautiful music is! I am listening to the most evocative album. The magical and moving song is called Allistrum's March be The Gloaming. Nothing has ever been heard so tenderly, and apples cinnamon, apples baking, peppermint leaves brewing, sharpie moving, red paper brightening and deeply romantic. Life is so full of moments. I love those that remind me. How does this one song move me? why call it a song when it is the greatest love notes ever knew, the most devastating heartbreak. How is the fiddle about so much and many days and people? I want to go hear truly beautiful music with you. I want to laugh and dance next to you. I want to meet people together an ask the best questions, and listen like no one has before. I want to change this world by loving strangers. I want to write about love and colors and you sing abut love an seasons. I want to stand my body right against yours and wrap a string around our waists so we can remember our size when we are cursive and no longer sound. Listen to 'Opening Set' by the same band. How alive, how certain, how boundless feeling. Iris has written about boundless love. what does that mean to you? I don't know if I want to write to you about love or music or this moment or magic. It is all magic. Go climb some tree in Ohio and I'll come find you. Read all you can for the rest of the month and I’ll sit down and read by you. I need to see your skin and eyes and arms reaching, swaying, playing the banjo while I lie in the grass. You need to see my hands and hair and arms moving up and down as I tell you stories about what I found ridiculous. and who I found beautiful. You are the first half of that list.

Born to worship summer and a wall of letters

I think I am sunburnt. That's all I ever wanted, for the sun to return to my face and pretend its here to stay. I want the sun to soak my whole body into a dark pink daze. Most cherished are the days spent in a bathing suit. Throwing shorts or dresses over a two piece, hair dripping and drying and hardening and once again soaking. The days on the lake. The paddle boat. The seaweed. The mud between my sister and I's frightened toes. The sound of toads. Fireflies. Poking a log with a stick and watching flames rush up. Is there a simpler joy than poking at a fire? Rearranging logs? was I born to worship summer, did it need more followers? Am I here to lie in fields, have them swallow me? A mountain to see. A sweat to break. Clouds to part. Washington no longer denied the searing pleasure. The sensible footsteps. The forest. A friend who's dramatic. Real dramatic and we're getting coffee before class in the morning. I don't drink coffee. I suppose candles are the sun inside, indoors. 100 flames replicating our hearts. Blowing out and boredom and lavender and scrunchies.

I have a room that is becoming more of a room since two days ago because I did stuff to it. I wish I didn't own any hardbacks, but I do. I keep asking the school library if there is anyway to request only paperbacks from the online database and they keep being confused and saying no. I think they should change that and stop thinking I'm crazy for wanting my hands to be comfortable while my eyes are reading. Isn't it wild how much we must coordinate? Feet and heart and hair. Fingers and wrists and words. Alcohol and throats and necks. Air hockey and a hurt thumb and two lost games. I put letters on my wall in my room that became more of a room recently because I decided that's where they belong. I don't want there to be any room for confusion when morning comes. words to greet me. Stamps from faraway friends. Things were sent and opened. Letters happened. All that matters is that letters happened and happen and are happening from Oregon to the rain capital. I'm excited to see this painting and handwriting. I'll thank you a hundred times or with a hundred sentences so let the first one be now: thank you.

Letters saving (Email to Sage about his letter)

Today was very hard and everything feels unmanageable. school was too much. patience was left at home this morning. coffee not coffee with my dramatic friend depressed the hell out of me mostly. I stumbled into the sauna with hopes of transforming my nausea. I rode the bus then another and landed home. I opened a melon. I ate the not fully ripe melon. then I opened an envelope and pulled out a beautiful letter one lined school paper with watercolor and a tiger. and thank you. for the colors and your return address and for answering my questions and telling me about Mexico. great story. I won't talk too much about the letter on the internet because I think those things are sacred and emails are only barely. today was very hard and everything feels unmanageable but I have a letter so nothing is that bad.

See the title in a dream and wake up walking

I feel delirious in my sickness, dreaming of the night air beyond the doors to shock me in to shape. I am typing and back spacing, writing and erasing and re-writing and back spacing, trying to express in one sentence what writing means to me. I believe that at 9 at night, with a sad throat and sorry nose, I must succeed at describing what this activity is, holds, and creates. I had to return In Watermelon Sugar to the library tonight and I feel sick about it. The book was the right size, brown and blue with a black and white girl on the cover. Its pages hold mysterious answers. Once I read the My Name chapter aloud to my best friend and I got shivers. It scared me. The book is very weird and the sentences are very simple and strange and I miss it dearly already. I know I must come into ownership of a copy very soon. I don't want to tell anybody about it. It's almost as if nobody else can read it. They can only stumble across it in a dusty library. They can only meet a stranger boy who confides he loves it. They can only see the title in a dream and wake up walking until they reach it. It can only surface from lemon water in December or Apple Cider in July. The pages can only be read after a Christmas light bulb breaks between your fingers. Are there any more books like it? Maybe I will discover them if I ever drink hot chocolate again. Maybe I'll only get to touch one after two hundred letters written in a day. Maybe there are 3 am books that scare you with their beauty. Maybe I could write to the author and ask him to write more and send it this way. I don't remember his name nor do I need to. Maybe I could set a piece of paper in my mailbox and it would fly to his. Maybe if we dug up somebody's front yard in a suburban neighborhood where nice boys ride bikes we would think of more books. Maybe love begins in Watermelon Sugar. Has the word watermelon ever before appeared in literature?

That drug is Brautigan

Last night I knew it was because of the mildew in the shower. I knew it was three thin bars of soap our dirty bodies have shaved down. What if scientists never told us about our dirty bodies? What would we think of us? I know whether or not I am charged for hot water at coffee shops makes my days right or wrong. I know I was surprised at a star tonight about the library. I know nothing about polar bears. Maybe I was manipulated. Maybe I found a burgundy sweater the color of winter berries that I feel safe inside. Maybe I can only write academically and truthfully in the late late hours. Maybe I lived in an attic in Normandy and turned my bed into a fort. Maybe I heard the neighbors laughing one night over their dinner party. That made me wonder about them. Maybe I am programmed to be happy at the onset of the Christmas holiday. The emergence of lights and cookies. I don't eat sugar but I like the sparkles. What decor do you find frivolous and what decor keeps you happy? Do you know your grandma's favorite book and song? Ever wound a music box? I stopped and stared and held my breath every time I saw a fox in London. Foxes are In Watermelon Sugar night and night again. Students are leaving and I'm writing something else. What does this activity mean to me? It's better than anything that could ever fall out of my mouth. Nauseous at the lost of my book. resembling a hangover. overdosed on watermelon sentences. Please tell me if there's anything else like this.

She moves and she’s still writing

Somewhere there is sunshine, even dragonflies. A voice, soft or wispy or forgotten that perhaps I need to be hearing. There are buckets dipping down wells and bringing up mineral water. There are writers who linger, are older; you read a children's book together. There are ladybugs crawling up third floor walls hiding from the winter. Mint and lemon balm are growing in a garden. Melodies are moving through our atmosphere. Somebody is opening a letter. Starfish are pointy and pretty sitting soundly at the bottom of the Puget Sound. water is being drained from a dark wheat glass. She is humming, he is strumming. He is bluffing or she is. Somewhere it is an early evening, fireflies burn their eyes. Somebody is On a Holliday Away while another sits in dew-damp grass. Stars pass scalps. what keeps them out so late? why do dreamers love Christmas lights as they do? A girl on stage once said she was trying to bring the night sky inside her room. Someone is calm and stretching. There is a sunny hardwood floor that supports a dancer. There is a person proud of pumpkin soup. Particular smiles elicit shyness. Some two people are in a cornfield. Stalks of weariness. Delirious and hilarious; those warm nights. There is a loved one in London sad on Sundays. Organized spines, how often do they organize their stories? There is an open basket flap revealing letters sent and received. How'd you get them all back? Asked. I came back to her, to here. They were waiting. They never left; touch them. Touches of the first kind. Are owls omens? who's feeling stoic this evening? There is a merry-go-round. hold on tight and forget. Camping and raccoons, did you bring your flashlight? She sold letter-writing kits. Someone rubs their eyes. How do they say it? what stage and whose? Somewhere there is a performance. They don't want part in it. Somewhere endings are performed, but she's still writing it.