Dissection: Letter to the Past

When I first wrote this piece, I was trying to capture memory, grief, and the way the past lingers—how it resurrects itself in recollection, and how, in doing so, it leaves the one who remembers stranded. There’s a kind of desolation in being the one left to remember.
In the first draft, I took a safer approach. I knew I had to take risks, but I hesitated—afraid of sounding too emotional, too juvenile. And yet, I was drawn to that desperation, the need to keep someone alive through memory. That tension—between restraint and urgency—was something I wanted to explore more deeply.

This piece was heavily inspired by the song Thomas by Laura Gibson. In it, she sings:
"Time bends us, back to when you're the young man
/ I see you in the sleeping or / Or I find I am distracted by your innocence gone / Take a life, just to make a new death, honey / I still don’t know where you've gone, come on / Tell me, I'll find you there.”

First Draft

Thomas,

Remember when we fell into the creek? Clothes stuck to our skin, and we stood there, dripping, laughing, like we had been made of water. It felt like something new, like baptism.

We kept telling each other the same stories, like we weren’t both there when they happened. But we wanted to hear them again, to make sure they were still real.

That night, in the field, the wind moved through the grass, and the fireflies blinked like little stars. You asked me what I saw.
I said, "I could lie endlessly here and listen to the wind repeating itself”

I wonder if you remember us-if at all-not as lost—as wind moving the branches of the trees

I’ve made it to Clavijo. It rained.
I write this letter, but maybe it’s just for me.
I keep talking to you. I’m a woman talking to you, always.
Let me be near, let me lie down in the churned up earth.

In this last meeting place, searching your pulse through words,

I lodge in my own breath.

Edit

Thomas,

Do you remember the day we fell in the creek? Wet creatures— clothes clinging to our skin. We stood as though we had been born from the water. And perhaps it had been some sort of rebirth. Do you remember how we retold each other the same stories? As though the other had not been there. And how one night, wading through a dark sea of long grass, we found fireflies blinking on and off cross the open field.

We became the grasses of the field.

You asked, “What do you see?”

“I could lie endlessly here and listen to the wind repeating itself”

Remember us-if at all-not as lost—

as wind moving the branches of the trees

Isn’t it great to have had a childhood together?

I made it to Clavijo, exhausted, aching, full of mountains

It rained,

“It rained,” the letter says,

I know this letter will return to me

I am a woman talking to you

all of the time,

insistent.

Let me be nearer, let me lie down in the churned up earth.

In this last meeting place,

searching your pulse through words,

I lodge in my own breath.

At 27, I find myself reckoning with memory loss and understanding grief more intimately.

I wanted to be honest and vulnerable without feeling sacrificial or exploitative, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to do that. So I let the piece ferment.
When I returned to it, I read it aloud and tried to find its sound—not in terms of rhyme or strict rhythm, but in how the words pulsed, how they moved. I revised based on that feeling. I’d love to say it was entirely intentional—that I deliberately broke syntax—but really, it was about listening to myself, deciding I didn’t like how this sounded, and asking, “How do I want to say this?” I was searching for the pulse of the words. I was also heavily informed by the “feeling”—Does this feel like memory?

The first draft leaned toward linear storytelling, but I realized I was forcing myself into a mold that didn’t suit the piece. I broke conventional syntax in places, letting the punctuation, or lack thereof, reflect the fragmented and sometimes incoherent nature of memory and grief. Grief has a way of pulling you out of time’s rhythm—of making you feel both inside and outside of it simultaneously. I wanted the piece to carry that same sense of disorientation—something dreamlike, something ghostly. The speaker knows the letter will never reach Thomas. And I’m not sure there even is a letter. The omission of certain details—like whether the letter even exists—was a deliberate choice to keep the piece from feeling too concrete or contained, reflecting the elusive nature of memory and grief.

The second draft felt truer to my tone. I don’t know if I’ve reached a “final version,” but I do know I like where the exploration is heading—toward the act of remembering itself. Through the edits, I got closer to the emotions. Again, I don’t know if I’ve arrived where the words want to take me, but for now, the risks I took—letting sound and feeling guide the revision—feel right.