I stole your handwriting:

Dear Elsie,

I know it’s been a while since we last connected. It’s been at least 12 years now, bar the occasional Instagram like or Christmas card from your mother. I have something to confess. You might have caught on in the fourth grade — and maybe that is the real reason why we stopped sending letters to each other after you moved away to Virginia — but I spent nine whole months attempting to copy your style of handwriting.

Maybe it was jealousy. It was definitely jealousy. What nine-year-old wouldn’t be jealous of the classmate that consistently wins drawing contests for litter clean-up and yearbook covers? Maybe one that had grown up with siblings, but that wasn’t me.

In February of fourth grade, you went through a phase where you’d dot all of your i’s with teeny-tiny hearts. It was novel — brilliant, even. I’d never seen such a spectacle and I was beside myself. What could I do to match your artistry? I tried smiley faces. I tried tiny stars. Nothing seemed to click. Thankfully, that phase was short-lived, but the two weeks it lasted made “free-write time” a waking nightmare.

For a good, long while, I relished every compliment. I had made your handwriting my own. I had earned those compliments. When I reached young adulthood, the mask started to slip. After all, I hadn’t really developed my own handwriting. I believed that I was living a lie… but then I thought about it for two seconds and realized that at that point in my life, the way I wrote was going to be my script for the rest of my life. I was past the point of developing fine motor skills — so, why should I care if I copied your handwriting in elementary school. It’s not like we’re going to sit next to each other in Ms. Kelly’s dusty, air condition-less room ever again.

In short: I stole your handwriting. It’s mine now. It’s kind of like a squatter’s rights situation we have going on here. And because I don’t know what yours looks like at this point in our lives, I’m assuming you can’t get your old script back. Maybe it looks even more polished now, or maybe you picked up cursive.

You might be a calligrapher or a sign artist at Trader Joe’s. I have no real way of knowing based on your social media presence, but I sincerely hope you’re doing well. Your Our My handwriting has served me well. Thank you.

All my love.

Carlin Steere

Carlin Steere

Carlin Steere is an experimental personal essayist and poet, dividing her time between the New England shoreline and Tampa, Florida. Her work has been published by Yale News, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and the Exeter Green Words Poetry Anthology — among other publications.