By Josephine Chloe Confido (JC1 Truth)

To you, who is 87,660 hours in the past.

From the second you close this letter, your life will be yours alone. You will be alone, and it will be scary. To me, that decision has already been made. To you, you’ve only started making it – and because it is made in your heart, it has become the most important place in the universe as we know it. 

I like to think that the universe is a curious graveyard of every decision I’ve ever made. It’s hard not to think that way when plasma spreads across space like veins around a heart – beating at the same rhythm as my chest as it rises and falls when I sleep. The sound of the sea resembles the laughter from friends whose love is enough to eclipse the night with their own light, the smell of peeled blood oranges like scraping my knee against concrete and running for my mother. And I never want to leave. It feels like a grave sin.

It only gets bigger, and one day, you will choose to leave. 

I’ve learned to grow comfortable in these ill-fitting, worn-out shoes. Ten years from now, I will have decided to run – but if I someday come to miss peeling oranges, and the way I stain my mother’s hands, and turn around to find the door locked behind me, would it be better to have never opened it at all? Is that okay with you, Mom? If I look at these untied shoelaces, will I still want to tie them and run? 

There are seams along my skin that serve as footprints of every person, and place I’ve ever loved. They have been stitched so seamlessly into my soul, I’m afraid I’d find I won’t recognize myself if I let go. 

They’ve shaped me, but so have these memories wounded me. Scarier things are lingering, adding salt to these eviscerated ribs – I think I might just bleed forever. Even then, the leaks stay in me, even when the shoes begin to bite. I think I’ve grown up a little bit. I grew out of old tee shirts, out of my shoes, and right out of my mother’s heart – but I can never outgrow time, and neither can my heart outgrow love. I’ll always fit right into my own little heart. 

I think that choice has been made. I think my heart has made that decision from the second I learned how to run. The further apart I pull these shoelaces, the tighter they grow – I’ve made decisions to escape this fate, only to meet it halfway. So I’ll stand there, and I’ll know that every decision has led me to this fate, and my shoes will always stay untied. But all I know now is that there is love. There is love in me, I can feel it through the cracks of my soul.

And where there is love, I will be there – I am there. I am here.