A letter from April 4th, 2025

These are the kinds of nights you have to hold onto. These are the kinds of nights you look back on and say, those were my golden years all right. Sometimes, you make an offhand joke and find yourself baking the world's ugliest cake for your friend whose mom just disowned him, and what can you do except for make a fool of yourself to distract him from the soul crushing sadness he must be feeling? You can see it from inside the apartment, but the moon is fat, yellow, and heavy, and hangs low in the sky. You'll see it later on your drive home in Sophie's **** box, MFB, aka Mother ******* Belinda. You're ripping down Boones Ferry with the radio on seek and the static between songs sounds more like music than anything else. Earlier in the night, you laughed harder than you've ever laughed in recent memory, so hard you felt all the blood red hot on your face, and you thought you might burst at the seams. Sure, you might have accidentally only used a quarter of the sugar you were supposed to for the cream cheese frosting (not only were you using half cups, you also forgot you'd doubled the recipe) but it tasted fine, a tart accompaniment to the sugar you didn't level before putting in the bowl. It was funny. Everything was funny. You all felt drunk, so drunk, without consuming a drop of alcohol. 酔っ払くなった。These are the kind of nights you know you'll hold onto, you know you'll look back fondly on even in the moment, a sharp spike of lucidity of present happiness, and how sometimes it hits you so hard just how far you've come, just how happy you can be. For a long time, the moment of happiness you've held onto was walking down your street and realizing that you could feel happiness again. You don't remember when it was, eighth or ninth grade, maybe tenth but likely earlier, but you felt happiness. It was a glowing yellow ball you held inside you, a light you've looked back on in all your darkest moments. It's that snow globe you held inside you when you and meital drove this past summer, zooming up Angeles Crest blasting Fleetwood Mac, and life felt like a movie, but in a good way, a John Hughes film, not David Lynch (not that you've ever seen any of his films, you just imagine it's the direct opposite of Hughes) and life feels like that now, even if you'll pay for it tomorrow. Life isn't infinite, you know this. But the opposite of ***** isn't life. It's birth. And this is birth. 無限の誕生. An infinite birth. Molly is going to die soon. You don't know how soon. You hope it isn't so imminent that you don't see her again before she dies. You're honestly not even sure what you'll do when she does die. You've always known she was going to, but you've never allows yourself to dwell too much. And now isn't really the time, either. It's 2:10am, and you have class in eight hours. But you promised yourself you'd write this, and you are. But now you're done. Because it's time for bed. And waking in the morning will be a new birth. Goodnight, I love you.