I know I wrote letters to people with no address on this earth, I know that you are dead. But I hear you. I hear all of you. We were here. Our lives matter.

I know I could have saved your ashes to put into the ocean, but I wanted you to have the journey, all the way with the currents, to the open sea. And I know that when I finally get to see the waves washing on the shore, to hear them, I will feel you there.

What’s left of what your body was —once the girl with bare shoulder blades , giggling, once the girl galloping an imaginary horse, once the girl sleeping in her sequined red dress— was now ash in a jar. Grains of bone. But then, I knew it wasn’t you anymore. You were somewhere more.

May, I love you with everything I am. For so long, I just wanted to be like you. But I had to figure out that I am someone too, and now I can carry you, your heart with mine, everywhere I go.