Dear Piper,
I'm sorry I died.
Those are the only circumstances in which your pasty arse would bother snooping through my things to find this letter beneath my socks. If not, then I've done a very poor job of getting to know you through the five years we've known each other. We're twenty one, now, when I write this—I like to think you're older and we got in a few more good years between us, that you're in your forties, I've just passed, you're queen of the world as you plan to be, that you've got someone there to support you through my passing. As you've reminded me many a time, I like to think about things, and you like to get those things done.
Our parents have been married to each other for two years now, I just got a postcard delivered from their anniversary trip. I like the affirmation that we're siblings in law, that you're my sister, and you're a right menace but it doesn't make you any less important to me. I imagine you read this with that look on your face, lips pursed as you fight to say that word you know I hate—the one you learnt from my mother, the one that is so fucking condescending I cringe in my present at the idea of it being heard out loud.
I hope that makes you laugh. I hope you're able to laugh now that I'm not there to force a smile out of you. When the doctor gave me the diagnosis, the idea of dying scared me much less than the idea of leaving you. It's been five years, now, but I don't think I've done enough to kerb those sickly fears you have of everyone abandoning you. The one and only upside of me writing a letter—like the sad poetic twat you accuse me of being—is that I can say what you need to hear without having to listen to you argue about it. I'm sure you're tempted to put this away and get back with your day, but you've got to follow the wishes of a dead man, or so I've been told.
I wish we'd had each other forever. That we could have done everything you'd planned for us—or maybe we did get the chance, the one downside to this letter, I suppose—but the memories I have of you currently, the ones I made up until the point where I died, that's more than enough. I always question why I couldn't have fallen in love with you, why we both refused to allow ourselves to be perfect together: but I'm too pragmatic to hurt myself over anyone half in love with someone else.
Currently, you are dating a model. I know you aren't too interested in him, that no one will truly get all of your attention in the way that Troy manages to. You're out shopping with Annie, I know you like to pretend that between the two of us, we fill the hole that he's left inside of you. I hope that in the future, whenever you read this, that things have sorted themselves out, that you both stop being stupid and talk like the adults you pretend to be. You're his whole entire soul, he'd do anything for you as long as you asked—but you never do.
I hated Troy before I ever met him. I'd watched you talk so fondly of some blonde twat with scrawny arms and a massive head—whether it's the ego or the actual size of his head, we've yet to determine—and it made me resent him for the fact that he didn't realise what a good thing he had going for him. I know you're reading this, waiting for me to address the very obvious elephant in the room of his sexuality, but you know that's not how I mean it.
I let myself make the assumption that I mean the world to you, in the same way that you do to me as a sister, but I know Troy is your whole universe. That the bond we shared and the memories we've made in these five years—of watching you grow into the woman you are and are still going to become has been something I'll treasure for the days that I have left, that I want nothing more than the best for you—will never be tarnished by regrets from thing we could have done. But I'm no Troy, and you're always going to be Piper.
I'm sorry I'm not there with you right now—wherever you are, whatever you've managed to do with yourself—but I know you won't ever be alone, and that's got to be the biggest constellation my death can give me. Whether it's Troy, or Annie, or slipping into a parallel universe where you make friends with Evie Erichsen, I know you'll be loved in ways you refuse to let yourself be.
You're the biggest star in the sky, Piper, and I love you as much as I do writing this as I do when I pass. You're my sister, the person I trust most in this world, the only person I've ever wanted to see happy in this shit we've had to deal with. I want you to smile when you think about the time we had together, about the adventures we got up to, and always remember that I'd never leave you by choice.
Your biggest fan, the person who would hang the moon for you,
Eric
[a/n]: this isn't even angst. this is actual pain lmao. remember when 'letter to' stories were really popular on here and the lowercase aesthetic had just started off. my friend jess wrote letters to holden, and i will fight anyone who tells me that wasn't the first one, because it was. just a reminder that i'm still writing, i'm still experimenting, and although i make constant threats to, i don't think i'll abandon first person completely
