don’t want to do my math homework. I was going to say that there’s no love it in, but that’s not true. It’s just not love from me.

My teacher loves it desperately, you can hear it in his voice, see the joy when a problem is answered right. Somehow in numbers he found what I find in words; a home, a place that feels right. So I can’t say that there’s no love in math.

All I want to do is tell you these things in the best way I can. I want you to know how perfect the weather was Saturday at the farmer’s market downtown, how the sky was clear and the sunshine felt like heaven. I want you to see all the people on the lawn of the capital; couples taking pictures and families having picnics. I want you to look up like I did at the last leaves falling from the tall oak trees, blowing in the wind in a way that makes you never want to leave.

I want you to feel all the love I do, even if no one is kissing me or bringing me flowers. I want you to to know how my mom looks at me sometimes, and how my English teacher believes in me more than I do, and what it’s like to have friends that tell you that you’re beautiful while you fill your soda at subway, and miss you when you’re gone. I want you to know that although it doesn’t seem like it a lot of the time, I am okay.

I’m unsure and quiet and young and self-conscious and scared, but I am happy. I am grateful for it all, for the chance to have a whole lifetime ahead, because I know how it ends. I know it ends too quickly for a lot of people and I try to remember that. I try to be kind because I don’t deserve anything that I have, I’m just lucky. By some miraculous chance I am here, writing to you, and I like to think that you can hear me. I like to think that not everything we do is in vain, that there’s some sort of purpose to our little spinning spec, though I have a sort of confidence there isn’t.