Dear Wigleaf,

I used to mail letters to myself. I also tried tricking the postal service. I put my address as the return address and skipped the postage, and weeks later it would come. Ha! I said. The mailman didn't realize there was a brilliant, 8-year-old girl who was screwing the whole system. I opened it. It wasn't just a letter. It was me—young me—from weeks ago. I never remembered exactly what I had written, so it was like being visited by an old friend, who had really bad handwriting and liked stickers (especially with unicorns).

I also used to tape "mailboxes" around the house. These looked like manila envelopes but they weren't, they were mailboxes. Everyone got one—me, the dog, my mom and dad, even the evil next-door neighbor.

I wrote to everyone, everyone—dear Mom, dear Dad, dear dog, dear evil neighbor, dear the president of the United States, whose name I can never remember and who doesn't seem important. Dear Alyssa Milano, Ricky Schroder.

No one wrote me.

I was mad.

So I had to write myself.

And sometimes I would hide letters around the house, like time capsules—in my father's underwear drawer, the dirty clothes closet, the weird lamp thing my nana gave us. But I could never wait long enough. I could never wait for time to pass so the letters would feel new, and so I started to send them in the mail.

And so I like this idea of time, of slowing it, delaying it. I like the idea of waiting. I like words and finding them later and looking for the meaning in the space.

I like thinking I could travel forward to myself.

Love,

L

PS Ricky Schroder, if you're reading this, you owe me a letter.




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Read LD's story.

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