hello, goodbye | ✓

O9

Dear Harriett Pearl,

Do you recall the first day of our middle school? I professed my admiration for your hair after you caught me examining your blond streak that shone within your brown curls. You smiled at me, unaware to the numerous impacts you were going to have on me.

You have always been the person that I looked up to whether it came to girl power or artistic skills. You're able to make every girl who feels like an ugly duckling sees their true swan reflection and that's what I want for you right now; to acknowledge you're worth so much more than a naïve boy so consumed in gaming that he treats girls and their feelings as games.

Over the years that I've known you, I've always recognized you as a girl who never settled for less than what she's entitled to and that shouldn't change now. You're beautiful and you know it. You're the cheer captain; the name itself indicates you as the person to extend good cheer to the girls that consider you as their role model.

I remember in my seventh grade extempore speech, I was asked to talk about the best advice I've ever received and I spoke about yours "people will always throw stones in your path. What will you build; a wall of difficulties or a bridge of success?" Your words were the illumination to my absence of light and I hope you will find this letter as your illumination.

Not only are your words uplifting but so is your ability to decorate a blank canvas with luminous paint and bring your pictures to life. I was mesmerized by your art work when I first came across it, for as a primary school student, the only art I could create was the art of being annoying. Since then, every time I take a glance at your artwork, I would lose myself in it, almost in a trance like state. Gosh, if your art was a drug, I would overdose on it.

As much as we've disliked each other in the past, I know you're someone that I would speak about to my kids in the future; I would talk about your bewitching artwork; your rousing advice; your feminist beliefs and how made a change in my life.