Arfa,

I keep trying to write this in a way that sounds like me. Not the lawyer me, who chooses every word like it might be read back in a courtroom, but the me you get on a quiet night, half sleepy, half honest, the one who forgets how to be clever around you.

You turn twenty today. Twenty feels like a doorway. You're not quite the girl you used to be, and not yet the woman you'll become, and somehow I love every version of you that has ever existed and every version that is on the way.

Among all the little things I wanted to give you this year, this is the one I built the slowest. A small, internet-sized room, made only for you, where I've tried to gather the way I feel about you, and kept it here for only your hands to open.

Please read slowly. Stay a while. Let yourself be loved, loudly, on a page.