Annie

Dear Nelson,

So many blogs this week said it was the end of Dick, it was the end of Phyllis, the end of Gene but this isn't the end of Annie because that is who I am. When this all started you told us to make up a name and to write as someone else but I didn't.

I wrote with my name, and I might regret it.

Now the summer is over though, and everyone else is moving on. moving out. their real name is out there and they are done playing with this pretend. and I am stuck.

Tomorrow life changes for everyone else. My dad starts his new job, the babies go to school, and even my older sister and her husband are starting a new semester at UVU. Even you are starting over with a new class of creative writing students. Not me though.

Tomorrow I am going to wake up at 5:48 and get in the car to drive to work with out brushing my teeth, just like I have every other day since I graduated. I am not moving out, I am not moving on, I am staying.

The world is moving and shifting around me like it thinks I am its axis and I don't know how to stop it or where I will go next.

So for now, I will stay where I have always been. I will sit here and be Annie, and no one will notice, and Nelson, I want you to know a few things before you go.

I want you to know that you play favorites, and I wanted to be one of them so f-ing bad but I wasn't and I would hate you for that if I didn't think you were so great.

And I want you o know that T.S. Wilde is my best friend and we fought a lot this year, and really it wasn't her fault, I was just jealous of her writing.

And I want you to know, she is jealous of mine too, but I didn't know that until a few weeks ago.

And I want you to know, I finished writing a novel. You are the first person I have told because I am not sure it is good enough, and I want you to know that I dedicated it to you even though I promised a lot of people it would be their name on that first page if I ever got published.

I want you to know that "To Nelson, thanks for helping me find Paris" is going to be written in little black letters on that first page. And I really mean it because I was stuck on chapter 18 for almost a year and then you read a poem on our first day of class and I went home and wrote for the first time in months.

I don't know why I want you to know all of that, but I do. and if you read this you will know but I am not sure you will. Either way, thanks.

Annie.

Dear God, I just want to remember

I wrote it on my hand last night,
praying, please lord, let me remember
Then I washed it away with my tears before the sun came up again,
and now I am not sure what it was.

I remember that it sounded like music and the truth and
 that it made me feel better,
and I remember that I want it more than anything else.

But those lines I drew with ink across the lines God drew with his hand,
they didn't last,
even though I thought they were indistructable.

And every week he writes me, and says,
"dear daughter,
you shouldn't have tried to keep that much happiness to yourself."

And I remember that God made me forget that he loves me too,
and hope that maybe,
when I die I can remember them both saying it.