Everything I meant to tell you.

The last Letter from Meg was lost.

It will exist in the great one-sock wilderness, where all lost things go. It will lie among the millions of letters lost and mislaid over the centuries, left in pockets and tucked into books, blown along the gutter and long since turned to rats’ nests and ashes.

It’s a shame, really. The last Letter contained so much that I wanted you to know about.

I wanted to tell you about “The Old Women Who Were Skinned,” by Carmen Maria Machado. Do I even have to say anything after mentioning her name? She can haunt you like your own ghost. You need to read this.

I wanted to share with you a story called “Ally” by the great Nalo Hopkinson that made me feel as though I’d been chewing on tinfoil while crying over an old friend.

I really wanted to make you laugh by getting you to read “The Third Martian Dick Temple,” by Sheila Marie Borideux. I really hope you look at this one. It’s worth it.

Most of all, I wanted to tell you about Cat Valente’s “Space Opera.” I know I yell about her writing an awful lot, but Cat is one of the writers I admire most. She works in prose like it’s an entirely new medium, like nobody’s ever tried it before and she’s the first. Her books have shocked me and touched me like no other writer, and the novelty alone is worth the price of admission.

“Space Opera” is laugh-out-loud funny, putting her in a glass with Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. It’s cheerfully queer, with the main character identifying as a “gendersplat” and having actual sex with a moonbeam. It’s nested and strange and utterly satisfying like no other book I’ve read in ages. If I’m the first person who’s talked to you about it, I’ll be very surprised. In a time when so few things give my heart a lift, this book was like a hot air balloon. If you’re feeling grimdarked-out, if you wish the universe could just sing you a glittery song, if the Eurovision competition amused you even in the slightest, you need “Space Opera” to happen to you. Warp speed to the book-buying place of your dreams. (Also, it just got optioned as a film.)

I have a few contributions of my own to combat the rising of the grimdark, of you’re interested in some more ballooning. Slate published my short story “Safe Surrender,” as part of their Future Tense series. I wrote on the subject of memory and bias after I got to thinking about how most of what we believe about ourselves comes from other people. All those stories about family, about what we were like as children, about how we came to be… they don’t really belong to us. They’re as much a part of us as our DNA, which also came from other people and only loosely belongs to us, define us though it might. I am very proud of this story, particularly because Nnedi Okorafor and Emily St. John Mandel are part of the same series. I am humbled by such illustrious company.

Shimmer Magazine bought my story about my very romantic concept of the writer’s afterlife where everyone is queer. I don’t want to tell you too much; it’s a short work called “Rapture.” All I can say is it’s a Valentine, inspired by at least three kinds of true love, and the most hopeful thing I’ve ever written. It’ll be online soon, but you can also see me perform it live at our Cliterary Salon Pride show on June 8th in San Francisco. It’s gonna be real gay.

Today, I’m in Ohio. I can see a thunderstorm streaking across the utterly endless sky toward me as I write this. I am very far from home, but having a delightful adventure. Wherever you are, I hope the same is true. Write back and tell me about it, if you’ve got time.

I can’t promise I’ll never lose another letter. I am imperfect and so is the world. But as long as my heart beats, it’ll send out words and I’ll find a way to get them to you.