Inklilngs 2024

Letter to an Old Friend Eve Zhou ’24 I think we met when we were too young to know ourselves, much less each other— in the pink ribbons of pink leather ballet slippers & uncomfortable pink leotards over our uncomfortable pudgy children’s bodies & the glassy mirrored walls of our ballet studio reflectingpink pink pink: rose-tinted glasses & pink ballerina dreams stretching on unbroken… & the ribbon flows on into the click-click-click of bicycle spokes speeding down the huge hill by your house and winding around the corner shouting in childish wonder to: our old elementary school, where we over the years watched our hair grow longer & our bodies grow taller & the old playground that had been our home grew away into an unfamiliar wonderland of green- painted metal poles & beige plastic, not ours any more: & then in the blink of my mind’s eye we are older middle schoolers just beginning to become ourselves & I do not dance anymore because that’s not who I am & you still dance because that is you. & we are alone entering high school & you stop dancing for a while because it’s all getting to be too much & I pick a new name for myself. & we forget who we are, you me and I you. I hear things about you from friends who are more like me than you & you hear the same from friends who are more like you than me.