If only I were born twenty years sooner… 

My dearest Greta Gerwig,

I think of you every day. Whenever I picture you walking the hallways of the Quad, eating at Hewitt tor hanging out at the Low Steps, I feel a cold, wet, tear roll down my cheek. Your presence permeates this campus like the cold January wind that fills my room and I wish I could hold it in my hands instead of feeling it go past me, ghostly but nevertheless magical. 

Everything on this campus reminds me of you, from the cigarette butts on littering the walkway outside of Butler to the grassy terrain of Futter Field. You are the pigeons at Barnard Hall; I hear your coo calling out to me in the third-floor lecture hall. You are like the caramel latte from Peet’s Coffee in Millstein: others may find you overrated, but I will stand by you to the last luscious drop.  

I wonder how many of the books at the library have had the absolute pleasure of being held by you, have had your hands caress their pages. How many classrooms have been graced by your presence? How many professors that still teach Barnard students today have been dazzled by your charm?

How could you exist in the very place I exist now, without our souls ever meeting? How was it that these halls have seen your smiling face, but I only ever see you through the silver screen? How does it feel to be loved by you, like your alma mater?

I daydream that, one day, I will bump into you on the 1 train, carrying a stack of books for my History of Capitalism class. They’d fall out of my arms and scatter along the platform, but you’d be there to help me pick them all up. And when our hands touch and our eyes meet, you will flash me that Frances Ha smile and ask, in your velvety voice “Do you go to Barnard?”. It’s a meet-cute. And we will chat all the way to Midtown, grab a coffee together like we’ve known each other for a lifetime. Later that same night, you’d invite me to a classy bar and we’d drink expensive wine until we can’t see straight.

But for now, I rewatch Lady Bird mouthing along with the words with Saoirse Ronan— I know it by heart. I dye my hair pink, just like yours in 21st Century Women. I cry over Isle of Dogs for about the hundredth time. I add more candles and pictures of you to the small shrine I keep in my closet.

In my heart, I know one day we will meet. 

Until then…

where Greta and I have both traversed via Bwog Archives