Sometime years from now,
the last grains of sand will drip slowly from my hourglass,
and the clanging sound of the bucket I have kicked will resound across the nation.
But before then I want to say that I existed.

I was there when the world cried for the lives lost,
and I was there when just my family cried,
in the small cramped kitchen of my grandparents house,
waiting for a call from the mainland,
sunk down, resting against the red cabinets.
And at those times I had nothing to say.
The words and letters never came together
to form coherent sentences.
So I kept quiet.

But now I have something to say.
I've finally been able to put together 26 letters to form words.
And I want you to know what I've held in,
over the many years that I've been silent.

I want to tell you about how,
when I was younger, I never wanted to turn 10
because that meant growing up, and growing up mean getting old,
and getting old meant giving up childhood.

I want to tell you about the times when I cried
in the middle of the night
because I was scared about the oblivion that is life and death.

I want to tell you about the dreams I had
when I was little. The ones where my mother left me,
and about how I would shuffle down to her bed,
and crawl in because that's what I did whenever I had a nightmare.
But I never told her what I was actually scared of,
so that she wouldn't worry,
and because I was scared that if I told her,
she might actually leave.

But mostly I want to tell you about how great it was.
We all grew up in a whirlwind mix of tragedy and wonder.
We jumped in pools, and baked in the sun,
and danced through summer storms,
and stayed up late into the night,
sometimes talking, sometimes sitting in silence.
The world moved around us,
and we were swept up in all the wonderful chaos,
we held the hands of angels and devils,
and never let either of them go.
That's what I want to tell you.