The Picture of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde

To Mary Mackay,

I thought about you while reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not because the book has anything to do with you. Or because there’s a certain moral fabric that makes me think of what happened. Not even the shadows reminded me of the play of lights on the windshield at night.

But a girl died in that book. But it’s not the fact that she died, or the way they explained it. You see, I used to think there were signs everywhere. Ghosts. Writings on the water. Fingers in the wind. Intersections. Signs telling me what I didn’t have or didn’t need or already had but didn’t know. I was always on the lookout.

Now I realize how wrong that was. How terrible it is to say “you mean this to me” and leave it at that.

I guess this doesn’t make any sense to you. I’m sure it doesn’t. But I looked you up on the Internet today and realized I had no idea what night you died. I think it was June—I’m sure it was summer—but I don’t know. And there’s no record of where you went to middle school or what you wrote in the school newpaper. No pictures of you and your mother in Italy. No mission trip to Brazil. No one even mentions the fact that didn't come to a complete stop and took the drivers test again. I remember when you told me that, how hard I laughed. You know, I’m still scared of driving.

I know we weren’t very close. I also know that if you wanted to come back and visit someone, it wouldn’t be me. But I’m in a writing program now and I bet you would have been really happy for me; you might have asked to read my poems. You were just like that. Some people naturally know how to care for other people. Some of us continue to learn.

I just wanted to tell you that I still think about you. That I’m sorry for that horrible poem in which I implicitly compared myself to you. Anne Carson wrote that “beauty convinces.” You were just so beautiful. I wanted that for a long time. Now I realize that one can’t go ripping off someone else’s beauty. It's yours. Always will be. And I'm glad I still see it when I think of you.