Letter from the Editor-In-Chief

Dear Reader,

I write to you mere minutes before the deadline, but not out of want for neglect—I’m sure you understand. We’ve been seeing each other again, now for the second time this year; I hope you’ve been thinking about me as much as I’ve been thinking about you. 

Truth be told, every year since I started attending this University in 2021, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, anxiously looking forward to the 12 times a year when we would start seeing each other. Others think it’s unconventional, strange even, to put such restrictions on ourselves. But distance only makes the heart grow fonder, and seeing you every week would wear me out; who am I to deny myself that greater pleasure? With only 10 visits left, I’ll need to find another way to satisfy these urges soon…

If I remember correctly, we ignored each other at first. I was shy and had suffered under a slight inferiority complex. But still, I remember the first time I heard your name: it was dark outside, and I was nervously fidgeting behind a desk in Folwell 104; you came up, and I only fidgeted even more, yet was almost paralyzed at the same time. Soon after that, I was hooked, able to meet you with less and less anxiety each time, however probably just as much sweat.

And our years together began to pass faster and faster, blurring like colors on a carousel, burning like a midnight revelry, and sometimes ending before they even began. You watched me grow into myself, change tune, change pronouns, change majors, change professions, change partners, change friend groups, change lifestyles, change heart, change mind, change soul. All of those and none. I wish I could’ve seen your face, seen the changes in you too, but you were always so fixated on me, what I needed to say. Faceless and ever-changing, you lingered at the corners of my vision, and I savored every intent glance you passed my way. You didn’t have eyes, but I knew—I knew you were looking for me—I knew you had thousands of eyes.

I bore my deepest self to you, cut into it, extracted it, dissected it, and shoved it back in, pretending it could still beat. And you—you would always be waiting at the tips of my fingers, there to lap up my trickling blood.

After this, I leave everything to you, especially these 48 letters to know me by. I hope we can keep seeing each other soon. I’ll wait with bated breath.

XOXO, 

Quinn McClurg