Postcards From the Future Exchange Program

Postcard 1 — Kyoto (postmarked April 17, 2032)

Mika—You’re going to think this is a prank, but it’s me. Future you. The physics club’s “spooky action at a distance” project does more than make LEDs flicker. It opens a slit in the mail. Long story.I’m writing from Kyoto in spring. There’s a vending machine at the end of my street that sells hot cans of corn soup, and I swear it’s the perfect temperature to hold between your palms after biking along the Kamo River under trees that snow pink. I eat onigiri stuffed with umeboshi so sour it wakes up your ancestors. My host grandmother keeps telling me to walk slower. “You are not chased,” she says.There will be a field trip to a Zen temple next month. When you see the gravel garden, don’t look for the “meaning.” Count the rake marks. Somebody’s hands made them at sunrise, again and again.—M

Now

I flip the card over and over until my fingerprints get blurry. Our physics club adviser, Mr. Ortega, swears he never approved an “experiment” that mails letters across time. I bring the postcard to him anyway. He holds it like it might be a rare moth that could crumble.“This is… elaborate,” he says finally, and I hate that he sounds proud of me for being gullible.“But it’s my handwriting,” I say. “And she— I— knew about the corn soup.”“You visited Kyoto with your parents when you were ten,” he says. “You’ve told that corn soup story so many times I can hear the pop of the can lid in my sleep.”I don’t remember telling anyone about the gravel garden, though. Still, I tuck the card into the plastic sleeve of my binder, behind my Spanish vocabulary list. A secret behind a conjugation.

Postcard 2 — Lagos (postmarked June 3, 2032)

Mika, listen—You’ll be tempted to pick the safe program. Don’t. Pick the one that puts yam fries on your tongue and traffic music in your ribs. I’m in Lagos for six weeks, and evenings taste like fried plantain and petrol. Danfo buses braid through traffic like they know how to dance; from the open door, a boy hangs in the doorway, thumping the side to the ache of Fuji drums from a street corner.At Bar Beach the wind is loud enough to drown your doubts. The salt stings your lip and then sweetly stays. My host cousin teaches me to bargain at Balogun Market: start at half, smile with your whole face, say “abeg” when you mean it. I buy Ankara fabric the color of ripe mango.You’re going to meet someone at a jollof cook-off—she will laugh before the punchline. Ask her about her grandmother’s wooden spoon.—M

Now

I have never bargained for anything, unless you count persuading my mother to let me keep a thrift-store blazer with questionable shoulder pads. After school, I search “Lagos jollof cook-off” and find a video where steam fogs the camera and everyone is yelling in delight. I watch three times to memorize the arm motion of the woman who wins; she stirs like she’s conducting a symphony and the pot is saying “yes” in vapor.I don’t tell anyone about the “she” on the card. Not because I’m scared of saying it out loud, but because liking the idea of someone I haven’t met feels like trying on shoes in the dark.

Postcard 3 — São Paulo (postmarked July 12, 2032)

Mika—Don’t sleep through Sundays. Go to Avenida Paulista when they close the street to cars and everyone pours into the sun. There’s a man who plays a berimbau under the MASP, and the note he pulls from that wire hums like a horizon line.I eat pastel from a street stand so flaky it shatters like good gossip. Guaraná bubbles in my nose; it tastes like a childhood I didn’t have but miss anyway. People kiss cheeks twice here, sometimes three times if they like you.You’ll want to hide your clumsy Portuguese. Don’t. Let the mistakes bruise you into color. Buy a ticket to a Corinthians match. When they score, the whole stadium becomes the ocean.—M

Now

Portuguese turns out to be the language Spanish puts on to go to a party. In my notebook, I practice: desculpa, com licença, obrigada. In the mirror, I practice cheeks. Two kisses, maybe three. I look like I’m bumping into the air by accident.Mr. Ortega corners me after club and asks if I’m okay. I say yes, then add, “The slit in the mail—what if it’s real?”He rubs his forehead. “Time travel gives me hives,” he says. “But if it were real—purely hypothetically—you’d need to test it. Write back.”“On what address?”“Addresses are notoriously sticky,” he says. “Even across time.”So I write: Dear Me of 2032, I counted the rake marks. There were eighty-one. I drop it in the blue mailbox outside the pharmacy, imagining the letter slipping into the grate of years like a coin into a pond.

Postcard 4 — Reykjavík (postmarked October 1, 2032)

Mika—You’ll think the light is wrong here. It’s late afternoon for hours. The wind is a gossip who knows what you said about it. I buy kleina at a bakery where the sugar crystals are sharp as broken glass and sweet as secrets kept on purpose.There’s a public pool culture here, geothermal and democratic. Everyone knows how to be a warm animal in cold weather. A little boy in a wool hat tells me “gluggaveður”—window weather, when it looks beautiful from inside. Write that down. It will save you at least twice.Do not go out on the ice caves tour with the first group on Saturday. Pick Sunday.—M

Now

Do not go out on Saturday. Pick Sunday. The warning scrapes me from scalp to heel. I imagine a headline with my name in it and feel sick. Then I imagine a different headline: LOCAL GIRL CANCELS ADVENTURE BECAUSE POSTCARD TOLD HER TO, and I feel worse.The exchange program fair is in the gym. The Kyoto table smells like plum candy and floor wax; the Lagos table plays Afrobeats and the speakers distort at the edges; the São Paulo table has the longest line; the Reykjavík table offers a dish of licorice that tastes like medicine and ink.I put my name down for all four. I can’t explain why, except that choosing feels like killing the others.

Postcard 5 — Kyoto, again (postmarked November 26, 2032)

Mika—Ok, bad news: I found your last letter in the slit. It smelled like pharmacy gum and autumn. It made me stupid-happy. But here’s the thing—we’ve made a mess. The postcards are not all from the same line.You are not standing at a fork; you are in a grove. When I write to you from Lagos, I am one branch. From Kyoto, another. Reykjavík lives, too, and São Paulo dances at the edge. When you try to step on all of them at once, you fall into the ivy.You have to choose. And also—you can carry more than you think without touching it. I still dream in Portuguese sometimes even when I’m in Japan.P.S. At the Zen garden, the rake marks are ninety-one in my memory.—M

Now

I stare at the ink until the words ripple. Branches. My future self has the terrible habit of being poetic when I need instructions. I want a list: Go here. Be this. Wear these socks.When I tell my mother I’m considering abroad, she puts the kettle on like she’s treating a wound. “You will miss what you have,” she says. “But you will learn how not to miss it the same way.”That night I dream I am in a market where each stall sells a Weather. One vendor lifts a jar labeled gluggaveður and the light shifts under the lid like a living thing. “Do you want to carry this home?” he asks. “You will never stop paying for the suitcase.”

Postcard 6 — Lagos (postmarked December 24, 2032)

Mika—I lied by omission. The girl at the cook-off? She wears a gold stud in her left ear and paints her nails the color of hibiscus tea. She asks you to dance by insulting your taste in music. You’ll want to be clever. Don’t. Tell her you’re scared of looking like a folding chair with knees. She’ll teach you how to find the beat in your ribs and let your feet be the afterthought.If you don’t choose Lagos, you will not meet her. That is simply true. If you do, there is no guarantee you will be brave. That is also true.Choose for the version of you who will forgive yourself either way.—M

Now

I hold the card like a bird that might peck me. I don’t know if I’m allowed to want a person with this much specificity. It feels like cheating, or praying.At the physics club holiday party, we eat cookies shaped like galaxies and Mr. Ortega gets sentimental about error bars. I pull him aside. “What if the test is… not which future is better, but which fear I can live with?”He nods, eyes shiny behind his glasses. “Every physics problem is secretly about that,” he says. “Even the ones with springs.”

Postcard 7 — Reykjavík (postmarked January 13, 2033)

Mika—I went on Sunday. The cave breathed. The blue was not a color but a temperature. I cried inside my stupid rental helmet, and a woman next to me offered a packet of tissues like we were on a bus.I do not know what happened to the Saturday group. Maybe nothing. Maybe a flat tire. Maybe everything. Warnings are often just ways of telling a story about courage.I’m writing this from a café where the pastries look like fossilized waves. Someone leaves their scarf on a chair and a stranger lays it across the back carefully, like a blessing.If you don’t come here, I will keep this for both of us.—M

Now

At dinner, I tell my parents I’ve decided. My mother is quiet long enough that I can hear the click of the kitchen clock separating one life from another. My father asks practical questions about money, credits, whether I will eat vegetables that aren’t pretending to be candy.Afterwards, in my room, I write a letter to the slit in the mail: I choose Lagos. I choose the yam fries and the traffic drums and the girl who insults my playlists. I choose to learn how to bargain with my fear. I choose to keep Kyoto as a season in my mouth, São Paulo as a rhythm in my knees, Reykjavík as the word I use when I need an inside day. I choose to be brave about what I will not have.I add a postscript: Tell me if you forgive me. Tell me if I’m still you.

Postcard 8 — São Paulo (postmarked March 2, 2033)

Mika—You chose. I am proud in the way thunder is proud of the sky.Listen: Even from another branch, I can hear Lagos across the leaves. I’m at a bloco for Carnival and the street is a moving river of sequins and drumlines. A stranger hands me sunscreen with the gravity of medicine. My face smells like coconuts and the sun claps once, loud, on my shoulders.When Corinthians score, the stadium becomes the ocean. I put my hand on my chest and feel the ripple find me. It feels like you.Everything you don’t choose still finds a way to teach you something. That’s the only consolation prize the universe guarantees.—M

Now

In the weeks before I leave, I practice bargaining with the cafeteria staff over the last cinnamon roll. I practice being brave by raising my hand more in Spanish and letting my R roll until the room tilts. I practice saying abeg in the mirror until my mouth remembers softness.On my last day at school, I slip photocopies of the postcards into the gaps of the physics lab cabinets, under the stuck drawers, behind the poster of Einstein sticking his tongue out. On the back of each I write: This is not a map. It’s a chorus.

Postcard 9 — Unpostmarked (found in my carry-on, between socks)

Mika—Airports smell like possibilities and disinfectant. You are reading this between a duty-free shop and a gate where everyone pretends they are not afraid to leave. Good. Keep pretending until the pretending turns into muscle.When you land, the air will be thicker than you expect, like laughter you’re not in on yet. It will let you in anyway. The danfo conductor will bang the side of the bus with his palm and the rhythm will find your ribs.If she insults your taste in music, say thank you.If you cook plantain, let it brown until it tells you it’s ready.If you write home, remember window weather—gluggaveður—so your mother can look out and love you without getting wet.If you’re ever tempted to ask whether you chose the “right” life, sit down, eat, listen for the ocean inside the stadium of your chest.I forgive you. I am you.—M

Now

On the plane, the hum is a comfortable lie, steady as a ruler. I tuck the last card back between my socks like a secret talisman. Out the window, the sky holds its breath so the wing can draw a white line across it.I can’t see our town anymore. But when I close my eyes, I can hear four futures rustling in the leaves, and they are all, somehow, speaking to each other. I’m not on all of them. I’m on mine. And for once, that’s enough.