You find letters stuffed in your mailbox – the handwriting is all the same: looped letters, hastily crossed t’s, open circles over the i’s, and at first glance, you think nothing of it.

Perhaps a welcome relief over the bills from debt collectors. A sigh escapes you because of the way the letters flood the tiny box, but you receive them gracelessly much like most receive rain – without thought or concern.

Then, your fingers open and close over individual envelopes, clenching them like pinching. Each letter in your grasp holds a memory or was it a dream? You tear into the envelopes, one after another, and begin reading the words.

At first, they don’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard, but then, you reread them and they begin to sound like words to a lullaby or a favorite novel.

I have come to hate winter because it reminds me of the season I lost you.

The words slip out like mourning. Like allegiance to a fallen god.

I drink my tea the same way you prepared it all those years ago & still search for answers when I strain the leaves like combing the beach for residue of broken lives.

And yet, the penmanship reads like gray. And every dust mote you awaken is a galaxy stirred.

You wonder if all love letters sound so forlorn.

Then, as you continue to read, it comes back slowly, slowly.

The letters give clues but no outright answers.

You promised me forever, my love. I’m still waiting for forever & yet, why do I think love, forever is a curse word in the mouth of the ignorant?

Something about this brings tears to your eyes. You never meant to hurt anybody. The words sting, and you find yourself replaying them like a concerto. Forever…a curse word.

You want to beg forgiveness, but as the pieces come together, so does a headache screeching through you, shrill and piercing. As it whistles through your skull, the memories flood back.

A car. A crosswalk. The way you hurried, glancing between the light and the car. But you weren’t fast enough.

The headache intensifies.

It’s shrieking, echoing the pain throughout your brain, like shrapnel, like shards of glass slicing through the softness of it. Just pure anguish.

You remember the car hurtling through the midnight dark. Rushing to get through the light. As though the driver didn’t see you.

You vowed to me a lifetime, the letters quietly accuse, but you cut it short. & I feel as though I cannot make new memories. I’m trapped. I’m floating in the past but hoping for a future that you can’t fulfill.

And reading that sentence, you remember. You have no future. You aren’t tethered here anymore.

We’re waiting for some eternity, the letter writer says, but what if our eternity is now & we missed our opportunity?

I miss you every day, my love. I wonder if you read my letters. If they find you where you are.

And finally, the headache quiets, but that’s when the tears begin. Because you have been reading each letter, but you are no longer here. No longer a body. A person in the proper sense.

You are here but gone.

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.