"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut
I wrote the first sentence of the letter, then crossed it out, then wrote it again—because the word dear felt like a lie.
The ink shone damply under the lamp, gathering where my hand had stayed too long. I watched it bead and spread, a tiny black mirror, and I saw my own face float inside it: a face still pretending to be human.
Somewhere in the apartment, the radiator sighed, shaking off a bit of rust; it floated down and landed near the letter's edge like an accidental period, as if the room itself wanted to end my sentence for me.
I had folded and unfolded the same sheet of paper six times already.
The crease was softening—like something that had been hidden for a long time.
I turned the page, felt the ache in my fingers—an old sign that acting human had gone on too long tonight—and let myself drift back to the day the world first caught me copying.
I was eight.
Sunlight on the schoolyard pavement. The other kids' laughter bounced between red brick walls in rhythms I couldn't quite repeat.
A girl named Priya showed me her hopscotch pattern: right foot, left foot, both feet, spin.
I watched, nodded, stepped forward, and copied her perfectly—too perfectly.
Their silence afterward was sharp.
No clapping. Just space between us.
That's when I learned something big: being exact can hurt people.
My pen hovered.
I have borrowed every heartbeat I ever used.
No. Too dramatic.
I am not what you think.
No. Too sudden.
Start over, non-human.
I stood and moved to the window.
The glass was cold on my forehead, the wind carrying the far-off smell of rain and metal.
An ambulance howled in the distance, its siren cutting through the air like a scream lost in city noise.
I closed my eyes.
There, in the back of my mind, Daniel's voice rose—gentle, amused: "Do you think cities remember us when we leave?"
And I had nodded, like I always did when I didn't know what to say.
I saved moments like that, like bottle caps or feathers. Things no one noticed I was keeping.
Before I ever wrote a single sentence to Daniel, I was Jennifer Lancaster.
A girl who came from a village that barely had streetlights, where silence wasn't just common—it was sacred.
In that place, people didn't interrupt each other, and faces stayed the same across decades.
I grew up learning how to stay quiet, how to watch instead of speak.
That instinct followed me into the city, into the university, where every voice was louder and every glance shorter.
There, I realized something simple and terrifying: if I wanted to survive, I had to become one of them.
Not through belonging, but through imitation.
So I copied.
I watched the girls in the corridor—how they flipped their hair without thinking, how they carried their books, how they made even silence feel social.
I learned their rhythms, their words.
Every boy I met, I called brother.
Not because I believed in that closeness, but because it gave me a title to stand behind.
I became what people wanted to see.
Neutral. Safe. Echo.
And then I met Daniel Violette.
He wasn't loud.
He wasn't showy.
He moved like he was made of pause buttons and second drafts.
He spoke with unfinished sentences and eyes that looked like they were always reading something invisible on your face.
He wasn't easy to copy—but that only made me try harder.
The first time we spoke, it was accidental.
Mutual friends had gone home for the weekend. We were both bored.
He texted me out of nowhere: "Do you think if pigeons had philosophy, they'd hate cities too?"
I didn't hesitate. I typed back: "Only the smart ones."
That conversation went on for hours.
We didn't talk about ourselves.
Just books. Street cats. How vending machines always swallowed your last coin like it was personal.
But even in that silliness, I felt something shift.
The silences between us weren't empty.
They were shaped. Measured. Safe.
It was the first time I didn't feel like I was rehearsing.
Mirrors. Echoes. Feathers.
Every image circled back to itself.
And I—I was just a room full of reflections, trying to write something that could sound like goodbye.
I went back to the desk.
The letter looked at me like a wound I hadn't cleaned.
To Daniel, who taught me the feel of silence, I begin with a truth:
You have never really met me.
I didn't cross that one out.
My laughter, my tears, the way I tilted my head—were copies.
I watched the world and repeated it.
I don't own the sound of my voice.
I'm a mirror. A song played through someone else.
I paused.
My breath caught.
Something inside me tightened, then let go—like a lock turning.
And I remembered another moment:
Daniel standing next to me in a bookstore, brushing dust off a used copy of Letters to a Young Poet.
He had opened a page and said, "I love letters. They're like holding someone's pause in your hand."
I didn't reply then, but I kept the sentence. Memorized its shape.
Tell me something true, he had whispered once in the library.
I couldn't.
Not back then.
But maybe now.
I picked up the pen again.
I came from the voice of another.
That line felt like cutting the first wire on a quiet, waiting bomb.
Outside, the rain began—soft, unsure, like even it wasn't sure it should be here.
A drop slid down the glass in a slow curve.
I watched it fall and disappear.
Inside me, something cracked.
Not pain—just the soft sound of a drawer opening.
I folded the paper once.
Then again.
Then I stopped.
It wasn't finished.
But it had started.