Wants: 9yo Suziq
More quietly—in the half-dark just before sleep—Suziq wants her parents to stop looking at their phones during dinner. She wants her mother to laugh the way she used to, with her whole face crumpled like a happy raisin. She wants to stay up past nine o’clock just once, not to watch cartoons, but to sit on the porch and hear the night turn from frog-song to silence.
At nine years old, Suziq wants a treehouse. Not the prefabricated plastic kind found in catalogues, but a real one—a crooked, nail-bare, secret-smelling fortress built into the arms of the old mango tree at the edge of her grandmother’s field. She has drawn its blueprints on the backs of school worksheets: a rope ladder that tickles your feet, a tin roof that sings in the rain, and one small window facing exactly east so the morning sun can wake her up for no reason at all. 9yo suziq wants
What nine-year-old Suziq wants, in the end, is not so different from what all of us want: a place to belong, someone to notice, and the freedom to grow without being rushed. Her list is part fantasy, part plea, and entirely honest. And if you listen closely, you might hear your own nine-year-old self whispering somewhere in the margins—still wanting, still hoping, still building that treehouse in the sky. At nine years old, Suziq wants a treehouse
And here is the truest thing: Suziq also wants to be nine forever. She has heard tenth birthdays come with harder math and softer hugs. So she hoards the small joys—mud puddles, frozen juice pops, the smell of rain on hot pavement—like a squirrel storing light for a long winter. What nine-year-old Suziq wants, in the end, is
She wants to be fast enough to beat Adam in the hundred-meter sprint. She wants the stray cat with the torn ear to finally let her touch its fur. She wants her drawing of a dragon-horse hybrid to be pinned on the classroom wall, not just because the teacher feels sorry for her, but because it is genuinely, strangely beautiful.
But a treehouse is only the beginning. Suziq also wants a pair of roller skates that light up when she spins. She wants her big brother to stop calling her "little mosquito" in front his friends. She wants to understand why adults whisper the word money like it’s a sick bird they’re afraid to hold.
