Dear Wally,

Tomorrow is the day that it all will end. The doctors told me so, they told me as I flung open the glass of the gleaming hospital doors. Tomorrow is the day that you will be taken away from me: thirsty plugs wrenched from their sockets and the plastic veins of life torn from your fragile skin. It is terrible to think that tomorrow your heart will be nothing but a dead stone in your chest. The air without your pulse will be empty and silent, as if a gaping hole were ripped out of the sky. I can't think about it anymore, Wally. It simply can't be. I want to cry but still my cheeks are dry. Dry like sand. Dry like the ground where you will be buried tomorrow.

The place is called Running Meadows, said the doctor, and you will be very safe there. Safe to rest and dream forever and ever and ever until the end of time, your eyelids frosted in the pale starlight. Slumbering beneath the trees and the flowers and the shadows and the fields of whispering grass. It sounds very beautiful, Wally. Running Meadows. Maybe you will like it there. Maybe if I visit the Meadows I will see your little ghost, laughing and sprinting with your feet like the wind on the fields. You would like that, I think.

Before I came to see you today I went to visit the Running Meadows, just so I could see it before they bring you there next morning. The grave-workers have a plaque for you, Wally, a plaque to rest above your earth-bed so everyone will know that it is you who sleeps there under their feet. The plaque is glassy like a dark rectangular pool, and on it there is your name, your name etched in serious letters. I asked the grave-people if they could make the letters happier for you, but they said no. I asked them if they could put a special message on the plaque for me, but still they shook their heads. They are not very nice, those grave-people. So instead I wandered out over the meadow, all by myself, and plucked flowers out of the soft earth. Dandelions, with their fuzzy heads beaming like tiny suns in the grass. Dandelions just for you. Dandelions like your little yellow head in the sun.

I braided them together, the dandelions. With my green-stained fingers I twisted the stems into a braid of sunlight, and then I wreathed it like fog around your box: the wooden box that tomorrow will be your bed. I hope that you like them, Wally. I hope that the grave-people don't mind.

I am bringing your ink-heart with me, Wally, the one that you drew for me on your bleeding notebook paper. You wanted me to have it. I will buy the prettiest picture frame and hang it like a moon over my bed, so I can look at it every night and think of you.

I will miss you.

I will miss you more than I've ever missed someone before. And as I sit by your bed with your cold hand in mine, I think that I will give you a kiss: just a little one, like a sweet raindrop on your cheek. It will give you something special to take with you on your way to your earth-bed. You tried, Wally, you really tried. I will never stop thinking of you, the little dandelion gleaming like gold in my hands.

Sweet dreams,

Kuki