let's pick a place.

Dear you,

London and Paris are both on my walls, but if I'm being completely honest my heart belongs to Tokyo.

Or maybe it belongs to New York, because I've never been to Tokyo though I'd really like to, and if I'm being completely honest, my dreams belong to Iceland because the amount of research I've done on that country is probably unhealthy.

And I've only been asked where my pen name "Blue" came from once. Which I answered both dishonestly and truthfully. Because I told her that yes, my name came from the book The Raven Boys because I am in love with all four of those fictional boys, but it also came from the ocean and the mass of oxygen that makes our sky blue and my walls that are blue and my heart which I'm 99% sure isn't red, but blue, and my blue veins and the blue dreams I've always had and my favorite hydrangeas which were blue and for my younger self who always believed everything could be fixed with a pink crayon but always colored the entire sky blue, and for the book Bitterblue because I always hated she didn't end up with the boy who she loved even though I saw it coming because Kristin Cashore is a feminist who doesn't believe in the institution of marriage, and maybe I just really wanted to find love and hold onto it, and for the blue watercolor wells that are always most used in my paint sets, and for the song Bright Blue by Daniela Andrade because despite myself sometimes I can't help but fall in love and maybe I just really honestly love the color blue.

I can't stop listening to Sylvan Esso and I can't stop thinking about my novel and I never feel like I own enough black clothing even though I clearly own enough to do an entire load of laundry of just blacks and I can't stop buying plants which I'm both sorry and not sorry at all for, because I truly love all of them. I don't even have any room for any more, but that doesn't mean I won't keep it up.

And I found a bunch of old notebooks from junior high and the one thing my younger self wrote that actually came true: "When I'm living on my own, I'll have a bunch of cool plants" and I don't know if maybe I'm just nuts or maybe I just have always loved life.

Point is I can't move to New York because rent is too high and I refuse to take out a student loan, no matter how badly I want to basically live in MoMA, and no matter how much I really wish I could live in that beautiful city, and no matter how much I wish I could go to art school in New York, and no matter how much I love the way the sun lines up in summer with the streets, and no matter how much I love the botanical gardens in the Bronx, and no matter how much I love lower Manhattan, because a New York flat doesn't have enough room for all my plants and New York doesn't have enough blue to satisfy my soul.

Sincerely,
xx
Blue