SeaHeart

Dear Twixt,

It took a year to write you. You were the novel I couldn't quit. And, when I was done, I went back to the beginning and edited you for an entire year.

Two years I spent with you. And you did not conform to me. You were wild, untameable, and I loved you in those periods, yes. And I hated you, too.

I wonder, sometimes, if I still hate you. I'll talk about you and bring you up and out, and I'll re-read a chapter I loved, or I'll spill out my heart to Jenn, and--in the back corners--there's always this little flutter whenever I think about you. My heart still skips a beat when I talk about you. I've hated you, yes--but, oh, how I've loved you.

They say that every writer has one story...one story that will tear them apart and build them anew and gut them and make them notice the stars. I know that you are my one story, and that frightens me. You have gutted me. At my darkest, you made me wonder if I should even write anymore. Me. The writer. The girl who knew, when she was six, that she would always and forever tell stories. You made me doubt the very marrow of who and what I am, and I will never forgive you for that. But time heals things, and because I've spent almost six months out of your company, I have forgotten the scars, the late nights where I wept because I could not make you conform to my idea of what the story should have been.

Perhaps not all of this is your fault. You were my child and my story, and I am just as much to blame as you are.

So, where does that put us? I am wary of you, and you are thinking tempestuous thoughts, and I have a rough draft and a cobbled together second draft, and so many variations on a theme it's a wonder I can keep track of how, exactly, I wanted you to end, with your fifty odd endings.

But, I've come back to you. I've thought about you in an amorous way. I've read the letters, and I've read the chapters, and I think I know how I can fix you, my darling. I think I know what I need to do to smooth the sheets, to make it better, to rebuild you from the ground up so you are no longer a monstrous, creaking thing, but something driven through the fire and made beautiful.

So, I have a proposition.

You are my story, and I know that I must write you. Every bit of you is outlined, I have your skeleton and muscles, your sinew and your Achilles heel, and together, I will stitch you into creation. But you must conform. You must alter. I can only provide so much of my own marrow to help you live, for--darling Twixt--you have taken so much of me already, I have very little left to give. If you can agree to be kind to me, your writer, your author, your mother, I will come to you again, each day, and I will stitch you something beautiful.

Please promise. We can only do this together.

With love,
The Author