The summer I was sixteen, my best friend and I wrote letters to each other.  We used pink pens and glittering ink, decorating the outside of the envelopes with song lyrics.  We made up names for ourselves and everyone around us, a secret, sacred world we could slip into at will.  Lost boys wandered through our pages, disappearing for days on end, sometimes forgotten, sometimes rediscovered, always beautiful.  It was a magical correspondence.  When I read the letters now I am still imbued with a sense of the infinite, even though it is clear from a distance how quickly we were beginning to unravel.

I am not, it seems, the only one who misses writing letters.  Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge:  during the month of February, write one letter every day the post office is open.

I have decided to do this thing.  I will write to the people I have left scattered across the places I have been.  I will write to the people who post addresses and invite mail from perfect strangers.

And, if you wish it, I will write to you.  Send me your address (at my email or via direct message to @thegirlhaswings).  I’ll cast my mind back to the where and the when of how we knew each other, and I’ll put down on paper those things I always thought I should have said to you but never did.  You don’t have to write back, but I do ask, in the spirit of hand-written correspondence, that my letters stay offline.

I don’t want to post my address online, for all the obvious sorts of reasons, but if you’d like to write me a letter, send an email or a tweet.

Questions and such welcomed.