And I always will, a current and ongoing interdisciplinary project, draws from Downey’s high school archives—love letters, photos, audio/video, and ephemera. As a queer teenager of the ‘90s, Downey carefully archived all their handmade, intimate exchanges, before the internet forever changed the ways we communicate and memorialize our lives. By entrusting these materials to a future self for integration and composting, time becomes a critical collaborator in the creative process. This act of deferral is a radical gesture of self-trust, where believing in a future iteration of my life as an artist allowed that life to endure and made this life possible. However, the works’ alchemy is not a purification ritual. Material deconstruction and disintegration, understood as inevitables, give way to ruthless forms of play and possibility.