Chanya Bayla Somboonvechakarn
Bangkok, Thailand
2025, Junior, Creative Writing

Dear Future Forest,

I don’t know if you exist yet. Here, the trees are memories stored in glass museums, and the rivers run underground in metal veins. Sometimes I press my hand against the last living vine on my street and wonder if you can feel me through time.

I’m writing because I need to believe you are possible. Because my mind, caged in concrete, still dreams of green.

This city is a constant hum, the electricity of a thousand lives packed into blinking windows. The air smells of neon and dust. Our parks are manicured squares of synthetic grass, plastic—there is no earth.

But still, when the wind blows just right, I think I hear the whisper of leaves we haven’t yet lost. And in those moments, I believe you are out there, waiting to grow.

Love,
A Homesick Friend

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Dear Future Forest,

I remembered something today.

When I was barely a child, before the last wild fields were paved over, I once dug my fingers deep into the earth. I wasn’t supposed to—the adults called it “unsanitary”—but I wanted to know what the world was made of, to feel the beat of its heart. I still remember the feel of the soil, cool and crumbly and alive. I remember the way it clung to my skin, dark under my nails. How it smelled of freedom.

It felt like something ancient, something bigger than myself. I didn’t have the words then, but now I know: it was something that could heal.

Now, I live miles above the ground, on polished floors that never change with the seasons—cold, bare tiles that oppress all curiosity. My hands are clean. My heart is restless.

I miss that small, rebellious joy, the feeling that the earth was holding me up.

Love,
A Craving for Freedom

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Dear Future Forest,

Some days, I wonder if the city is swallowing me whole.

Everything here is sleek and ordered: temperature-controlled buildings, fluorescent sunsets glowing from billboards, curated playlists instead of birdsong. We have mastered predictability, but at what cost?

I move through the days half-asleep, numb behind glass walls. My mind aches for something real, something wild—the way a river bends when it decides, not when it is told.

Every time I close my eyes, I see you, in all of your beauty and power.

I see cities learning to breathe again. Towering buildings wrapped in vertical gardens, where every floor bursts with native plants filtering the air, cooling the buildings naturally and feeding pollinators who return each spring. They are the city’s lungs.

I imagine buildings not made from dead, rigid materials, but from living, organic ones—bio-concrete that heals its own cracks with the help of bacteria, wooden structures erected from fast-growing trees and mycelium, flexible skins that adjust to temperature and light like leaves do. Architecture would be less about conquering nature and more about growing with it and from it. Adapting, bending, thriving.

In this future, cities no longer erase the wildness of the world. They extend it. Nature runs through every street, climbs every tower, fills every breath.

Then, we would be living.

Love,
An Adaptive Architect

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Dear Future Forest,

Today, I found a crack in the pavement outside my apartment. Just a sliver, just enough.

I knelt down while no one was looking. I dug at the dust with my fingers. And I planted a single seed.

Maybe it was foolish, maybe the city will tear it up tomorrow. But maybe—maybe you’ll find it one day. Maybe you’ll grow from it.

These are my first letters to you, but someday, I know you’ll write back. Through the leaves, through the rain, through the sound of roots breaking stone. Through the songs of birds carried on the morning air and the rush of wind through the trees. I know you can hear me.

I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep planting.

For you. For us.

Love,
A Future Friend

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Dear Future Forest