A few weeks shy of turning forty-years old, Loveinshallah.com editor, writer Deonna Kelli Sayed, pens a letter to her twenty-year old self.  Listen to the audio to hear Deonna read this piece, accompanied by music haphazardly composed and performed by the author.

Dear Deonna,

You will be forty-years old in a few weeks. Here is it, birthday you’ve dreaded: the big 4 – 0.

It came so fast.

I want to take you back to your twenty-year old self. I imagine another version of me hanging out in a parallel universe with her hand on the pause button, bending an ear to what her future self is trying to say. Maybe this letter will find a way to her and when she lands in the fortieth year of birth, perhaps she will write something very different to her interdimensional twin self.

From all the way here the future, I know how secluded…