Dear Older Hélène,
I am now halfway to 30, and I never, rarely, sometimes, often, always wonder if you will forget me before you forgive me – for being me. I now hate every crisp laugh, couth chatter, and aching fragment of your lonely, mature mind. Later, my hate will be haggard, and your regret will be fresh.
To live is to regret. To write is to bleed (on paper). To remember is to torture (a scared child). My hellish days and ways are your poetry; My dying naivety is your legacy. My stolen lullabies become your elegy; Your worldliness is my indignity. You remember me like a glass mural. When I grow up, this mural falls from your softest walls, your youngest years shattered. And despite your best efforts, you won’t glue me together again.
Secretly, you will wish I can stay a little longer, to keep the cottage of the adult world warm, to heal the winter weathers of hurt. Preciously, you will wish to bury me in the poetry of your childhood burning in fears, tears, and candles. Then, you will be numb. You will be defined by what I couldn’t change. You will erase every corner of my haunted home and its doors so hard to close I left open. Finally, you will tear down chapters, calendars of my life falling apart and me staring blankly at it, alone, at the helplessness of it all.
This persists and resists me to ask you, will you be innocent enough to read this, stupid enough to miss me? If yes, then don’t ever, ever teach me: Nothing is forever; being cruel is being clever. Don’t ever change me, because my childish dreaminess is a lie. Don’t ever touch my candy cherries, which you no longer eat. They rot in fake niceties, and to rot is to accept reality.
Please do feel young, air-headed, tantrum-ridden. We a final chance to be wild, a child, before writing tragedies older than our age. Before we hate fine china and fresh porcelain but use it anyways. Before you see me in backlogged dreams, deserted dorms, and painfully, reluctantly, miss me when you lose the best you gained, and don’t know what to lose after it.
Please don’t say goodbye to me because I say that to you. Please count the days because I count them for you.
Love,
Hélène
This article appeared in the jingkids 2021 July-August issue
