About
River An
Peddie School 27’
As a singer, actress, writer, and visual artist,
Musical Theatre
Vocal Performance
- Performer
Vocal Performance
- Performer
SEPTEMBER 2023 – PRESENT
- Lead roles: Fiona (Shrek) and Gloria Thorpe (Damn Yankees) in school production
-
Chapel and memorial soloist; core member of Peddie Singers (10th, 11th) and Treblemakers (9th) with repertoire in jazz and musical theatre.
-
Lead vocalist for Blair Day band (2024, 2025), performing before the full school community.
- Upcoming (Feb 2026): Ensemble member in Peddie’s winter musical Mamma Mia, expanding musical theatre experience.
Peddie Student DEI
Leadership Council
- SDEI Leader
Leadership Council
- SDEI Leader
MAY 2025 – MAY 2027
Liaison between DEI office and students; collaborate with affinity groups; lead community workshops.
Focus: moving from awareness to respectful dialogue; amplifying underheard voices.
Core skill: listening and facilitating to reach compassionate solutions; carrying this work into college leadership and academics.
Visual Storytelling
Amphion
Literary Art Magazine
- Artist and Editor
Amphion
Literary Art Magazine
- Artist and Editor
SEPTEMBER 2023 – PRESENT
Independent study in visual art; Scholastic submissions recognized (Silver Key).
Amphion 2024 cover artist, layout editor; curating work and mentor contributors.
Plan to lead Amphion and apply visual/narrative strategies to independent work and critique in college.
Peddie Arts Citizenship Committee
– Theater Representative
– Theater Representative
2024 – Present
- Represent the theatre community in school-wide arts planning, advocating for student perspectives in arts programming.
- Connect theatre with civic dialogue by framing performance as a space for empathy, identity, and social responsibility.
- Collaborate with faculty and student leaders to promote inclusive, accessible, and community-centered arts initiatives.
Peddie Creative Writing
Signature Program
- Participant
Signature Program
- Participant
SEPTEMBER 2025 – MAY 2027
Selected for a two-year, discussion-driven signature program focused on sustained study of literary works across historical periods and the production of original creative writing.
Create and revise original poetry, genre fiction, and graphic narrative through regular workshop critique with peers and faculty..
Junior-summer in-person program (2026); final portfolio and public capstone reading.
Law & Psychology Research on Juvenile Vulnerability
– Researcher
JULY 2025 – NOVEMBER 2025
- Completed original research study (N=307) examining adolescent comprehension of Miranda rights and linguistic vulnerability in the justice system under mentorship of a clinical psychologist.
- Conducted statistical analysis on age, confidence, and familiarity effects; manuscript submitted to The Whitman Journal of Psychology and National High School Journal of Science.
- Presented findings at NJ Student Ethics Conference (November 2025): "Why Do Miranda Rights Fail to Protect Young People?"
Columbia University High School Law Institute (HSLI)
– Student Scholar
Fall 2025 – Spring 2026
- Selected for a competitive law program at Columbia Law School to deepen practice-based understanding of juvenile justice.
-
Participate in weekly case-based seminars on criminal procedure and constitutional law led by Columbia Law students.
- Connect independent research on juvenile vulnerability to real-world legal decision-making through lectures and case discussions.
Hartley's Legacy at Princeton CIEL Senior Center
– Founder & Volunteer
Spring 2025 – Present
– Founder & Volunteer
Spring 2025 – Present
Founded intergenerational music project collecting seniors' most meaningful songs and life stories through performance, conversation, and collaborative singing.
Shifted from performer to listener and documentarian; archiving elders' memories through interviews, illustrations, and voice recordings.
- Developing sustained community service initiative in coordination with Peddie School's DEI programs to amplify underheard voices.
Peddie Varsity
Girls Golf - Athlete
Girls Golf - Athlete
SEPTEMBER 2023 – PRESENT
Varsity team member; MAPL team champion (2025).
Built resilience, patience, and team mindset; value humor and cohesion alongside technical skill.
PRESENTATIONS & PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
November 22, 2025
November 22, 2025
- New Jersey Student Ethics Conference (NJSEC 2025) - Presenter
- Selected as school representative to present original research: “Why Do Miranda Rights Fail to Protect Young People?”
- Delivered analysis on false confessions, linguistic barriers, and legal reform proposals.
Honors
Peddie Declamation Contest – Second Place(2026), Honorable Mention(2024, 2025)
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards - Silver Key (2024, Painting), Honorable Mention (2025, Painting, Mixed Media)
Amphion Literary & Art Magazine – Selected Cover Artist (2024)
Peddie Talent Show – 2nd Place (2024, Vocal Performance)
MAPL Golf Championship – 1st Place Team (2025)
Languages
Korean (mother tongue, native fluency)
English (second language, native fluency)
Acting makes me feel most human and most present. The vulnerability necessary to take part in performance is exactly what teaches me most about courage, honesty, and human connection.
Theater allows me to channel my empathy and creativity while exploring emotions I might otherwise suppress. It challenges my perfectionism and teaches me to prioritize my emotional presence and genuine joy on stage with both cast and audience.
It requires me to fully trust my voice and the work I have done to refine it. In practicing the creation of music, this art that predates spoken language as we know it, I remind myself that my voice and the passion that helps me carry it belongs uniquely to me.
Where other art forms allow me to revise or reinterpret before I place them in the public eye, even allowing some level of removal from my own identity, my singing is directly connected to myself.
Art, for me, is a conversation between discipline and chaos. Ironically, my art is where my most obsessive, precise self emerges. I am methodical and sometimes even rigid, but it’s that structure that gives my expression room to expand.
The creative process often begins with frustration, be it a lack of originality or a technical challenge, but I’ve learned to welcome that discomfort and work through it.
Writing is the only way I can understand myself, and through it, I wish to further understand the world around me and express what it means to me.
© RIVER AN 2025
slowgirl by Greg pierce
2026
The 158th Declamation Speaking Contest
2nd Place
“Murder, He Says” (1943) - Young Arts 2026 Submission
Damn Yankees,
Peddie Musical, 2025
Gloria Thorpe
As a sophomore, I was cast as Gloria Thorpe in Damn Yankees, a lead role typically given to upperclassmen in Peddie’s Winter Musical. It was a bold, fast-paced part with sharp wit and vocal firepower—and one I embraced fully. My teachers saw something in me and trusted me with that energy, and on stage, I returned it with everything I had. Gloria let me be unapologetically loud, clever, and commanding. I wasn’t just playing a character—I was inhabiting a kind of power I didn’t always show offstage. That role didn’t just grow me as a performer; it affirmed how performance can reveal dimensions of the self that others already believe in.
Peddie
157th Declamation Contest, 2025
Caryl Churchill
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
New York Film Academy, Intensive Summer Camp, 2025
The Prom, Peddie Musical, 2024
Shrek, Peddie Freshmen Musical, 2024
© RIVER AN 2025
Slow Girl by Greg Pierce, 2012 - Young Arts 2026 Musical Theater Submission
157th Declamation Contest, Peddie, 2025
Caryl Churchill
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
156th Declamation Contest, Peddie, 2024
© RIVER AN 2025
Damn Yankees,
Peddie Musical, 2025
Gloria Thorpe
As a sophomore, I was cast as Gloria Thorpe in Damn Yankees, a lead role typically given to upperclassmen in Peddie’s Winter Musical. It was a bold, fast-paced part with sharp wit and vocal firepower—and one I embraced fully. My teachers saw something in me and trusted me with that energy, and on stage, I returned it with everything I had. Gloria let me be unapologetically loud, clever, and commanding. I wasn’t just playing a character—I was inhabiting a kind of power I didn’t always show offstage. That role didn’t just grow me as a performer; it affirmed how performance can reveal dimensions of the self that others already believe in.
The Prom, Peddie Musical, 2024
Shrek, Peddie Freshmen Musical, 2024
School Performance | Outside of School
Please view in full screen and
turn on the volume!
turn on the volume!
Blair Day Chapel, 2025 - main singer
On stage, I aim for clarity, not perfection. I want each sound to mean something—to carry both discipline and feeling. Singing allows me to reveal what can’t always be said, with honesty and precision.
Blair Day Chapel, 2024 - main singer
Every year, Peddie produces a music video to welcome new students and share the spirit of the school. In 2024, I was selected as one of the lead vocalists for our cover of “Defying Gravity.”
Working with fellow student musicians and a professional production team, I helped bring the story to life through song. The final video became part of Peddie’s official admissions campaign—an honor that let me represent my school with both voice and heart.
Peddie Concert, 2024
Peddie Vaspers, Dec. 2025 - Peddie Singers
More Video
© RIVER AN 2025
School Performance | Outside of School
“Before It’s Over” (2012) - Young Arts 2026 Submission
NY Jazz Academy - summer intensive @Smash Studio, 2025
Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Duke Ellington)
Centerpiece (Harry Edison & Jon Hendricks)
© RIVER AN 2025
School Performance | Outside of School
Please view in full screen and
turn on the volume!
turn on the volume!
Blair Day Chapel, 2025 - main singer
On stage, I aim for clarity, not perfection. I want each sound to mean something—to carry both discipline and feeling. Singing allows me to reveal what can’t always be said, with honesty and precision.
Blair Day Chapel, 2024 - main singer
Every year, Peddie produces a music video to welcome new students and share the spirit of the school. In 2024, I was selected as one of the lead vocalists for our cover of “Defying Gravity.”
Working with fellow student musicians and a professional production team, I helped bring the story to life through song. The final video became part of Peddie’s official admissions campaign—an honor that let me represent my school with both voice and heart.
Peddie Concert, 2024
Peddie Vaspers, Dec. 2025 - Peddie Singers
More Video
© RIVER AN 2025
School Performance | Outside of School
Please view in full screen and
turn on the volume!
turn on the volume!
Blair Day Chapel, 2025 - main singer
On stage, I aim for clarity, not perfection. I want each sound to mean something—to carry both discipline and feeling. Singing allows me to reveal what can’t always be said, with honesty and precision.
Blair Day Chapel, 2024 - main singer
Every year, Peddie produces a music video to welcome new students and share the spirit of the school. In 2024, I was selected as one of the lead vocalists for our cover of “Defying Gravity.”
Working with fellow student musicians and a professional production team, I helped bring the story to life through song. The final video became part of Peddie’s official admissions campaign—an honor that let me represent my school with both voice and heart.
Peddie Concert, 2024
Peddie Vaspers, Dec. 2025 - Peddie Singers
More Video
© RIVER AN 2025
Hartley’s Legacy at Ciel of Princeton Senior Center
2025 Spring - Present
I initially began volunteering at the Princeton Senior Center by singing for seniors during regular visits. Over time, I noticed that certain songs consistently opened deeper conversations—prompting memories, stories, and emotional reflections tied to specific moments in their lives.
As a member of Hartley’s Legacy, I began to approach this work more intentionally. Rather than focusing on performance alone, I started collecting the songs that held the greatest meaning for each individual and using music as a starting point for dialogue. Through shared listening, conversation, and singing, these sessions became collaborative exchanges grounded in memory, storytelling, and mutual learning.
Building on this experience, I am currently developing this work into a sustained intergenerational community service project. As a DEI leader at Peddie School, I am preparing to formally connect this initiative with the school’s DEI efforts, shaping it into a long-term service project centered on inclusion, identity, and intergenerational connection.
- Began participating through vocal performances at the Princeton Senior Center and expanded the work as a member of Hartley’s Legacy, focusing on music as a tool for connection rather than presentation.
- Collects seniors’ most meaningful songs and life stories through structured conversations, shared listening, and collaborative singing.
- Currently developing this work into a sustained intergenerational community service project in coordination with Peddie School’s DEI initiatives.
© RIVER AN 2025
2025 New York Film Academy, Acting for Film
- Acting for Film
In Summer 2025, I completed New York Film Academy’s intensive three-week Teen Acting for Film Summer Camp in New York City, training each day at the Battery Park campus under working actors and directors. The fast-paced curriculum immersed me in scene and monologue work, voice and movement, improvisation, and on-camera audition technique, while also casting me in the 3-Week Filmmaking students’ short silent films—giving me practical set experience and strengthening my collaborative storytelling skills. The program culminated in a professionally shot and edited monologue and two-hander scene, providing me with a polished digital reel that showcases my growth in nuanced screen performance, articulation, and creative confidence.
© RIVER AN 2025
Poetry | Fiction | Essays | Research
2026 Scholastic Art & Writing
Gold Key
Gold Key
All of the Above
- to cook rice,
- to count the amount of days in a month,
- to fracture someone’s bones,
you had yet to learn neither their Eastern magic nor how
- rice absorbed water one-to-one regardless of the average adult-sized first phalanx.
- calendars could be Julian or Gregorian, very un-Eastern, and that it worked even if February is a little special.
- you should never punch with your thumb tucked in.
You were supposed to be a big girl, but you couldn’t help but cry, because
- all three times the rice came out wrong, so you tried to destroy the evidence, but the wrinkled flesh of your index finger pointed right back at you,
- you had to count your index finger twice to account for both July and August. There were too many months, too many months until you could mother yourself,
- your hand throbbed, long before Philosophy 101 would teach you how to put a name to your pain, and your pride must have stung more than your palm.
Maybe your tears blurred your vision, or your memory fails you, but you think their eyes
- went to you before the crime scene beneath your mother’s feet, and neither of you knew where you went wrong, but she pardoned you anyway, humoring your self-incrimination. She never stopped pardoning herself, which is to say she never stopped turning herself in, and you wonder who she surrendered to without a mother of her own.
- crinkled as your mother peeled your fists open and smiled a little smugly like she understood time as an equation instead of a device of fate, like she folded laundry and caught up to her second-favorite soap drama before she changed your life every day and week and month and knuckle at a time.
- softened when you ran to your father’s side, and he held you very close like brass knuckles tight against your fingers, like a ribcage heavy on your heart,
but you rub your hands together on a brittle winter day and remember
- the warmth of your mother’s palm.
- the press of her thumb counting the months for you.
Director's Cut
In some photo I am a hundred days old.
Stuck between stacked rice cakes and a gold ring,
there I am. 백일잔치, they call it, my first debut,
already performing for the camera
though no one asked if I wanted the part.
I’m sure the camera flashed, but in that white
blindness, I should have stayed
in the delivery room
or my country
or my mother's hold.
But I will spend every debut,
every staged smile,
chasing the sun
which is to say the camera
which is to say the audience
to look my way just once.
But what does an audience want from a body
that flies too close to it?
I wish I were Icarus
because his dogma is more American than I
will ever be
but he wished too, before he fell,
and pipe dreamers pay more than they dream
but maybe I can keep running
and just maybe, tripping over steaming asphalt
I'll get closer to the sun
inside, burning my gut.
Pebbles
When I was young, sometimes,
I would pick up pretty pebbles at the beach.
I don't remember who I was with,
but the feeling remains here, still,
making my hands ache.
The sunlight lay low across the horizon,
and my small fern-like hands,
wet with seawater,
were cold and hot at once.
The pebbles were small and round,
no edges, so they didn't hurt
even when I squeezed them tight.
That's why, I think, I held that stone
for quite some time, turning it over
and over in my palm.
My hand remembers.
As if my heart had nested in my palm.
It remembers what it held,
what temperatures it passed through.
Maybe those pebbles still exist
Somewhere,
slowly worn smooth by currents and sunlight.
I send my regards
to all those places I left behind,
to all the pockets that once held my hands,
to the small, round, warm pebbles:
Hello? How are you… or so.
Things That Come
비가 온다.
In Korean, rain comes.
Rain is a visitor,
knocking at your door.
In English, it rains.
Rain is an event
that happens.
I am the one watching,
standing apart
from what falls.
잠이 온다.
In Korean, sleep comes.
Sleep arrives like a guest
I've been waiting for.
I never fall.
I am found.
In English, I fall asleep.
I am the one falling,
gravity pulling me down
into unconsciousness.
슬픔이, 기쁨이, 불안이 온다.
Sadness, joy, anxiety come.
In Korean, feelings accompany me.
They visit and leave
and I am the receptacle
they pass through.
In English, I possess my feelings.
I have anxiety.
I have joy.
I have grief.
화가 난다.
In Korean, anger happens to me.
I am not the source.
I am the receptacle
where anger occurs.
In English, I am angry.
I am the subject.
Anger is a thing I contain.
마음이 생기다.
In Korean, my heart-mind arises.
생각이 나다.
A thought appears.
I don't possess them.
They come to me
like rain,
like sleep,
like spring after a long winter.
In English, I make decisions.
I am in control.
I choose, I want, I will.
My therapist asks:
What are you feeling?
In English, I say:
I am anxious.
In Korean, I would say:
불안이 나를 찾아 온다.
Anxiety comes
and finds me,
not when I summon it,
but when my body remembers
what my mind forgot.
It will leave
when it's ready.
And somewhere between 온다 and "comes,"
between possessing and being possessed,
I exist:
untranslatable,
bilingual,
made and unmade
by the languages
making me happen.
© RIVER AN 2025
Poetry | Fiction | Essays | Research
A Knock from Yesterday
Three sharp knocks thud at the door, evenly spaced with the precision of a metronome. One long night, Mrs. Sullivan has imagined this sound—the moment her daughter comes back home. First would come the garbled apology, any intelligible words sparse and splintered between sobs, and then the damp embrace. She would allow herself anger, but only once the door shut closed.
They’d argued before she left. The girl had stormed out, muttering that she needed space from all the ghosts in this house, and Mrs. Sullivan knew she meant the loss neither of them could bear to say aloud.
She lets out a shaky exhale and opens the door.
“Hi, Mama,” Katie says, standing on the porch with her hoodie zipped and her hair brushed slick.
Mrs. Sullivan blinks. “You… you’re back.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
As she brushes past, she slips off her bleached sneakers, even though Katie never cared about being tidy.
Mrs. Sullivan makes tea and remembers to set out milk and sugar before Katie complains. The girl sits at the kitchen table, wrists folded parallel to the edge.
Setting the mug in front of her, Mrs. Sullivan tries not to stare too long at the girl’s hands. They’re perfectly still. “Do you want to talk about why you left?”
“You always want to talk.” When Katie reaches for her cup, her fingers align perfectly on the handle, equidistant from each other. Mrs. Sullivan opens her mouth to warn that the tea is still scalding when the girl lifts it to her lips and drinks it in one long, measured swallow. The steam gathers in her hair, leaving it damp against her cheek. Her skin doesn’t flush.
“That’s not new,” Mrs. Sullivan says, trying for lightness. “But coming home like this… Katie, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I? I promise I’ll never leave again.”
The woman clears her throat. “You must be tired.”
“I’m not,” Katie says, “but you look exhausted. Mom, why don’t you get to bed? I’ll clean up the mess.”
Mrs. Sullivan watches her drink again. The two sugars and two creams sit on neat stacks across the table—if anything, it’s cleaner than when they first sat down.
When Katie finishes the tea, Mrs. Sullivan clears her throat to break the silence, but the sound seems to fall flat, absorbed by the room instead of filling it. “It’s fine. You should get some rest, honey.”
Mrs. Sullivan remembers her daughter filling the house; she remembers how every cabinet in the kitchen would creak for her daughter who rummaged through them until she found the packets of hot chocolate she hid from her; she remembers how she could always hear the girl skittering across the house when they played hide and seek together, joy buzzing through her pattering footsteps no matter how hard she tried to smother the sound; she remembers how she would pretend not to hear; she remembers how her daughter never realized she was letting her win.
Now, all sound seems to curdle into the girl in front of her.
The woman stands and turns toward the sink, needing distance, needing something to touch that isn’t the girl. The faucet sputters, then steadies into a thin stream. Washing her cup slowly, she watches the water bead on her skin. Behind her, the chair creaks. She glances back and pauses.
Katie isn’t sitting anymore. She stands like she shouldn’t be, like a ragdoll waiting to be repositioned. Her arms hang at her sides, her chin lowered just so, her gaze fixed on the woman’s back.
Mrs. Sullivan blinks, and the girl blinks too, just one heartbeat later.
The woman tilts her face. Katie mirrors the motion, almost imperceptibly delayed. A chill itches at the woman’s spine like static. She’s unsure if she can be afraid of the poor girl who calls her mama. “Katie?” she manages.
“Yes?”
Her response is gentle and instant, but she doesn’t move her lips fast enough. The sound arrives half a second early, her face catching up after, and the house holds its tongue.
Mrs. Sullivan strains a smile so it doesn’t turn into a scream. “I thought you might want some more tea.”
Katie shakes her head. The movement is smooth, too smooth, like film played at the wrong frame rate. “I’m fine. Seriously, are you sure you should be having caffeine this late? You know it keeps you up all night.”
Past dinnertime, Mrs. Sullivan usually never sees her daughter, who always locks herself in her room. Besides, she hasn’t been in her mother’s room since she learned how to fold her own laundry. But it must be obvious how busy the woman is with work, so she tries to let the static pass. She dries the cup, back still to the table, watching the girl’s reflection in the window.
When Katie’s not speaking, she barely breathes at all. In the reflection, she gapes straight back, but when Mrs. Sullivan catches a direct glimpse of her, she’s studying the last dregs of tea swirling in her cup. Mrs. Sullivan looks back to the glass. Straight back again.
The cup slips slightly in the woman’s hand, knocking against the sink. The sound is small, but the girl remembers to flinch this time. Mrs. Sullivan turns off the water, and the fridge forgets to hum. Silence spreads thick as fog. She hears only her own heartbeat and wonders if the girl can hear it too.
And then come three knocks, almost timid. Mrs. Sullivan would’ve missed it if not for the house’s abated breath.
She glances toward Katie, who doesn’t move. The girl’s eyes shift slightly toward the hall, then back to Mrs. Sullivan.
“Stay here,” the woman whispers.
Katie tilts her head but says nothing, a dog sniffing at its reflection as if to say: go on then, what’s your next move?
The air in the hall feels colder as Mrs. Sullivan moves toward the door. Another three knocks.
“Mom?” a voice calls from outside.
The voice is familiar enough to make the woman’s chest ache. Behind her, the frail drag of a chair across the kitchen floor.
Outside, the voice grows louder. “Mom? It’s me. I’m sorry—god, I’m so sorry. I know these past few days must have felt like losing Katie all over again. I never meant to put you through that.”
Mrs. Sullivan stops and turns halfway. Katie was standing now, doll-jointed, eyes fixed on the door.
“Mama?” Katie asks, her voice soft as it hangs.
“Olivia,” the woman shouts toward the voice outside. “You should stay back.”
Katie tilts her head to the side. “That’s not my name.”
“You’re right.” Mrs. Sullivan grips the door handle. “It belongs to my daughter. The only one who’s still alive.”
Silver Fish and Linings
Dear Antoine,
The sea is a quarrel of colors today, blue stung by a late pink hush. I walked the harbor before breakfast and watched a boy pull a silver fish from a pail, only to hand it back to the water. He reminded me of you, how you paint and paint, then shred the canvas when a single brushstroke goes wrong.
Mother slept until noon. She’s still unwell, though she’s talking more. When she woke, she asked whether Paris still smells of warm stone after rain. I said yes, though I don’t know. Here, it smells of salt and someone ironing linen in the room below mine.
I’ve tried keeping a journal. Replicating your endless drawings is impossible, but words feel easier to search for. I note the hour gulls fall quiet, the two chips in my teacup, the baker who ties each ribbon twice. If this page glows even faintly under your lamp, then at least something of us hasn’t gone out.
I miss the city every day, but I’ll stay as long as she needs me.
Cécile
Cécile,
Your letter came this morning. I read it by the window without taking off my coat. The boy with the fish resembles me, yes, but I don’t hand things back once I’ve caught them. I hold on until they rot. You make me sound gentler than I am.
Paris doesn’t smell like warm stone. It smells like paint thinner, my neighbor’s cigarettes drifting down the hall, and dog shit, though I doubt the stench was any better in your mother’s time. I’m trying to work, but I can’t remember the last time I liked what I painted.
Perhaps your words find me because nothing else does. For a second, the room didn’t feel empty.
Antoine
Debbie,
I know I was cruel last night. No need to remind me. I’ve been rehearsing our conversation since dawn. You were right. I retreat the moment life demands patience from me.
I shouldn’t have asked you to leave, but we both know what we have only works because it isn’t required to mean anything larger than wine and late nights and exhibitions neither of us truly like. If it did, it would collapse.
I’m writing instead of calling because writing lets me apologize without conceding too much. Still, consider this an olive branch. I want to see you soon.
A.
Dearest Antoine,
The rain stopped this morning. I watched boats move in slow circles while shopkeepers raised their shutters. Mother eats more when I don’t mention the doctor. She’s improving.
The baker’s daughter asked when the painter from Paris would visit again. I told her you’re busy, which is true enough. She’s too young to know you as our most loyal country bumpkin. You’re kindest to yourself when I’m your worst vice.
You say you aren’t as gentle as I make you seem. If that’s true, then I owe the boy with the silver fish an apology. When he lifted the line from the water, he was stronger and far more careless than either of us ever were as children, much less now. The heaviest things we reel in are our pens and each other’s arms.
Let your dissatisfaction guide you; it’s lighter than you think.
Cécile
Dear Cécile,
Your last letter arrived folded so neatly it made me uneasy. You’ve always believed order could rescue meaning from rubble. I used to envy that. Maybe I still do.
I’m trying to let dissatisfaction guide me. At least I’ve stopped ripping canvases and started painting over them. They cost too much. It creates a strange texture, building something new over the mistakes rather than destroying them. I call that progress.
I’m glad your mother is doing well. She thinks kindly of me, I hope, though one can never be sure with her. She should thank you for being the steadier one.
Antoine
Dear Debbie,
I don’t know how to write this without sounding theatrical, so I’ll be spare. A part of me has lived on small, bright things. Your laugh, the way you name a wine like a street you once lived on, the relief of being understood quickly without having to ask.
But “quick” has begun to feel like a trick I perform for myself. I miss asking. I miss choosing to understand someone and being chosen back. I am learning that holding on isn't the only way to keep something.
You deserve someone who is entirely here. I’m not that person. You were never a mistake, and I will carry what I owe you as care. Don’t forgive me. I couldn’t bear it.
Antoine
Dearest Antoine,
Mother insists I return to the city. She says I pace too much and the harbor is tired of seeing me every morning. She’s right. She's steady again.
I’m nervous, which is silly—to return to what is already mine. Last night I wondered whether you would still recognize me. A fleeting thought, but I thought I should tell you. I hope the city recognizes me too.
I’m looking forward to seeing whatever you’ve made, even if you hate it. I’ll defend it.
Cécile
My dearest Cécile,
The studio is cleaner than it’s been in months. I threw away more than I kept. Your letters are the only things I couldn’t put out.
I’ve begun painting again. Small studies, nothing ambitious. I feel like a beginner, but maybe that’s all I am. Maybe that’s enough.
Come home when you can. It rained briefly this afternoon, just enough to darken the pavement. I opened the window, and for the first time in years, the city actually smelled of warm stone.
Antoine
© RIVER AN 2025