Post 1, day 1.

I am hugging a backpack in a cave, near a fire, underneath a night sky full of constellations never seen by your ancestors or mine, hoping against hope you will see this. Hoping anyone will see this.

I could warn you of what lies ahead, leave you words, clues, that would help you out.

But I made it and you have always been just as capable as me. To offer help would feel like doubting you, and so I shall not, only express my faith in you.

Indeed, I'm sure you'll be here any minute now, coming around the bend to join my in this bone-chilling solitude.

And so, to pass the time, the few minutes that I'm sure I have left before your face comes around the corner, I'll write you a poem of all my life's stories. Perhaps someday, fittingly, I shall build for you a tower of poems extracted from these. But please, oh please, don't make me wait that long.

And already I grow weary of wishing, and turn my mind to the warmer past.

When I was in middle school, I kept several journals and wrote at least two letters to myself. Most of the journals only have a handful of entries, and most of the letters have been lost to memory.

Two of them, I remember vividly.

There was a journal, actually my first ever, in which I was so appalled by the intimacy of having someone else read my thoughts that I spent several pages ruminating over what it was to be known. By this point, my hand was sore and I went off to play tag. I was a rather happy child.

There was a letter, to be delivered to my future self (there were many but I only got one back).

I wrote several drafts of it in my head, scrapping each after I failed to find the words.

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"Did you ever start living as a girl?" No that's no good what if I forget about that. I'd hate to cause problems for myself in the future by bringing up a childhood dream. I'll be such a different person, who's to say?

"Did you ever do that thing you wanted to do?" If nothing else I might as well be precise.

By this point, I had only a few minutes, so I scrawled across the entire paper

Dude can you feel the love?

 Which sorta missed the mark when I get it later on. Y'know, cause I'm not a dude.

And, to my younger self, the answer is yes. To all of your questions and the one you couldn't even put into words, not in your own mind where you thought you ruled, yes.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, you do have people who will care about you after even after you shamefacedly ask them for help loving yourself. Hold them close before it's too late. Because someday soon, you'll turn into me. And on that day, you'll leave the world you know behind without a second thought. And I am so lonely right now.

Post 2, Day 1.

There's nothing else to do but write, I guess. It was a lovely day this morning, heavy soft thunderheads hanging in the sky like endless beanbag cushions stretching up to the heavens. Or so I hear. I was too engrossed in homework to notice. (This is a fiction. I overslept. But cut a girl some slack when she's trying to stave off hypothermia.)

I'd like to be like one of those pillowy clouds. Lonely and austere and touching the sky, beyond the reach of humanity and stacked (you know what I mean).

I wrote a number of haiku about the sky once. I went on a walk to see all the lonely sad places in the suburban wasteland I grew up in, and when I felt sad enough, I looked up at the sky and allowed the words in my head to trickle into a phrase in my mouth, which I blew out with a breath and then tried to capture on my phone before the moment faded. It took me all day to write a hundred words in that way, but I can't help but wonder if I've ever put more care into a phrase that I did that day.

Hello, wind. I'm nobody.

Why do you veil the sky

I listen--goodbye

It's funny, isn't it? A melancholy teen captured so well the feeling she would have years later. But one thing is different. I meant the goodbye to have two meanings: the wind is simply leaving, and I had better get home for dinner. But now, that goodbye means a different thing to me. It means I've been writing for nearly an hour and I've still yet to see you turning the bend. Please don't make me stay here, feeling so small and alone in the smoke-stricken wind.