Sometimes I ache for the person I will be five, 10, 15 years from now — a stranger. 

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And when I am her, what will become of the girl I am now? 

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The one cleaning her bedroom at two in the morning, cramming folded T-shirts into stuffed drawers knowing they’ll come out again wrinkled, 

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and whose left-hand fingers are coated in melted chocolate, recording each little thought in a notebook before it can melt away — panicking at the thought of others reading it. 

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This girl I know so well, getting out of bed in the dark to put on a dress because reading “Pride and Prejudice” in pajamas just doesn’t feel right. 

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Will she slip below the surface like the others? 

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I can count them inside me like the rings of a tree stump. 

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The 3-year-old running around in crooked green fairy wings, collecting a bouquet of dandelions for her mother, 

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the 5-year-old cutting off her braid because it got in the way of the yellow construction paper she was turning into a countdown chain, 

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the 7-year-old twirling to a Nora Jones song with a long purple scarf, tumbling when her foot got caught in the sheer fabric. 

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They are just as much strangers as that girl I have yet to become — 

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a photograph I saw in an album years ago, or a dream I forgot I had. 

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Or what about the ones who feel more like friends I haven’t talked to in too long? 

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The 12-year-old who looped thousands of hopscotch boxes around the entire block during the summertime, 

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the 13-year-old who wrote bad poetry and embarrassing time capsule letters to her future self, 

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the 15-year-old whose chest crushed with real panic for the first time, waiting to make a left turn across busy traffic. 

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I can’t remember all these girls well, 

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sometimes I loathe them — mostly I miss them. 

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The reminders of what I once was, and what I am now, that I can never be again. 

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But I know they are there, 

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the voices feeding me songs to sing, 

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melodies to dance to, 

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stories to tell.