writing a love letter
she says
she is recording her heartbreaks
and the ones
she has broken. she writes
herself into stories -
the ones she doesn't belong in yet
and the ones she never did.
the scrolls will form her pyre, she says -
she will row out to sea,
bury herself beneath them.
she swears her sadness and her fury will set her alight.

i tell her hope is the most painful curse,
but despair is oblivion.
do you think, when a tree burns, it is erased from memory?
everything lives on, even in death.
i tell her death will one day be her true home
and not the escape she seeks in this moment.
i tell her
even when you are so full of memory
it shatters you
you will survive.
in the meantime you must teach your ghosts to dance.
take your fury
and break their bones with your bare fists.
bury them in an unmarked grave.
see what grows.

Penned by my hand on the 16th of Miraman, in the year 621 AF.