I love the epistolary novel. Especially when I was younger, the usage of letters as narrative format was always something that interested me, not just for how it’s unique but also the difficulty in its execution; there is a deliberate care and intention when writing an epistolary novel, or anything in that style.

A challenge that I’d often hack away at then but swelter with my very own lack of progress. Writing two characters, writing their dialogue, which needs to be natural and consistent so in that way had to be precise, to the compulsions of the plot and the mechanics of social cues and subtext… I’m scared of that lack, on my part, of the skill required. I keep wanting to be subtle about it, to set my grand revelations in this undertow that a reader might delight in unfolding, but instead I write essay-games and run-on sentences. Can I call this casual?

Which might explain why I default to this, instead of letter-writing. While I’m sure it's fairly obvious by now that I can't help involve my writing with "myself", you've might not yet realized I can't help include "you" as well. One day I’ll write something with sense. And distance.

I think the reason behind my fondness for the epistolary novel is somewhat misplaced. What I engage with and write in when I say isn’t as fictional, isn’t between two characters but instead between me and you. I confuse them because they work from the same modus: an intimate space. This allowance, this sacrifice, this disrobe. People often point to some otherwise form, perhaps formal and prosaic, or if not then some discrete narrative composition under the auspices of prose, of poetry. And while I have learnt and trafficked in all of the above, this is where I am most natural. Not just because it’s conversational, but because, I feel, that’s all there is to do. When I write, or make, it’s for that goal.

To scratch graffiti on the bevel of desks. To learn how to scream, something I still can’t do even when alone. To dissolve my borders and open doors, watching who I am become what I was, and then watching that diffuse into the air: to settle like dust on leaves; to stain eyeglasses; to enter your mouths.