Skylar Marcus Lee was a radical, young, Korean-American, genderfluid, queer organizer from Madison, Wisconsin. He was sarcastic and brilliant and genuine and sweet and wanted to heal the entire world. He loved his dog Nugget, selfies, pop punk music, flowers, fruit, his “grunge normcore aesthetic,” and writing letters. We met through the national organizing work we did together with GSA Network and bonded immediately in that fierce, intense way that one does when you meet someone you love in such a close space. We talked every day and I am just beginning to come to terms with the fact that we will not grow old together. Skylar took his life on September 28th, 2015 and I wrote this final letter to him that day as a way to honor and remember him as well as process the hurricane of emotions that come when someone you love dies by suicide. He didn’t want to be remembered as a sob story, as a one dimensional trans young person with a hashtag. This letter is only sharing parts of him, parts of our relationship, parts of me, but it’s a start in remembering him as the beautiful, multifaceted person that he was.

Dear Sklyar,

I can’t believe the last thing I ever said to you was a shitty joke about the moon. I was falling asleep and when you texted me goodnight you had already decided to end your life but I didn’t know. I wish I could have known. You told me you loved me and I told you I loved you, all the way to the supermoon I couldn’t see behind the clouds and back. And it was true.

I can’t believe that I never sent you any letters. I drafted so many, picked out so many temporary flower tattoos to send you, but I let you down and I’m sorry. I was creating a book for you, a collage of unsent letters, drawings, poetry scraps, Weird Words That I Like and affirmations that you, Sklyar, are the most brilliant, loving person that I have ever met.

Last night you asked me to read you a poem. I wish I’d picked better, I wish I had paused after reading that message to think about why tonight. I read you “Consider the Hands That Write This Letter” by Aracelis Girmay and as I sit here on my bed sobbing, I imagine your hands, as small as mine, holding each of the letters I hold in my hands now, sending me all your love from 1,040 miles away.

When I woke up this morning, I had three messages from you. You sent the last one nine minutes before you started your suicide note. I wish that I stayed up with the irrational certainty of grief that I could have saved you. For every star in the sky I couldn’t see last night I wish that you were alive today. That you were alive always. Your messages said “FRIEND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! / Just want you to know that / I love you so much.”

Letters are for processing. Letters are for figuring out who we are. As much as this is a letter to you, this is a letter about me. That’s what we do, right? I will keep writing you letters, because I don’t know where I am right now, where I am without you.

I didn’t tell you about this, but last week in DC I told a room of a hundred people that I considered ending my life this year. I’d never spoken about that to more than a few people, really had never spoken about it with anyone but you. In that room I felt so loved but also felt so much pain of kids like us and kids like you and kids not at all like us who feel like we’re staring into a void we cannot control. I held a microphone and cried and told everyone that I loved them, that I was so excited for our futures. You are brilliant, loved, and already changing the world in a million ways. But you didn’t need to be any of those things for your life to be important. I wish your future was still unfolding.

In your suicide note, you talked about how much you love fruit. I remember the night we decided that your inner fruit was a pear. I made the call, because “i feel like pears have a really calm, healing energy. They’re really flavorful and yummy but the colors are really serene and pears can be great as part of a dish or be the star on their own.” You decided that I was a peach. You said, “I think peaches have a gentle soft feeling like spiritually in a way? Like how pears feel calming to you. I also have an association of kindness because when I lived at my old house, in the summer my gran and I would go to this random old couple’s house who had a peach tree and they’d let us take their peaches for no reason except to be kind.”

Skylar, you are the kindest person I have ever known. Someone we both love once said that in a movement there are healers and there are organizers. You are undoubtedly the most brilliant and compassionate organizer in my life, but you inspire me every day with the way you support others. You are so selfless, so loving, so thoughtful, so invested in the wellbeing of everyone around you.

This letter is so long, but you’ve sent me longer. 30,000 messages between us on my phone are longer. I opened my emergency letter from you today, the one I’ve been hoarding since August to unveil on a bad day. I also opened four more, because apparently you had stopped telling me when you were sending letters and unbeknownst to me they had stacked up in my mailbox. I know you don’t always remember what you wrote so I can summarize. The emergency letter was gorgeous, you’d painted me a galaxy scene complete with a cat riding Saturn. Amongst the stars glistened affirmations like “you are very special” and “I am proud of you.” You always add the cutest details. The other letters were just as lovely because they carried pieces of you. You told me about a woman you love at work and how white liberals in Madison love this random turkey flock that is “hella aggressive.” About how you love the new connections you were making with queer people of color in your life. About how your grandmother talks to Nugget. About everything and not enough.

This letter is so long because, dear friend, I really miss you.

Love always,

Foster