The Letter Back


By Charlie E.Shih
University of Southern California

Once a girl wooed a boy with a guitar and a few sweet words and a boy wooed a girl with his darling face and a more than a few cheeky words of his own. They stayed up early into the morning from the evening of the night before sharing bits and pieces and leaps and bounds. They saw each other every few weeks in the wee hours of the morning and tangled in themselves until its late hours whispering into each other’s tender warmth.

The girl soon had to leave to go off and grow and become, because isn’t that how life is when you find someone you want to be with. They walked in the dark and held each other in the warm covers of the night before.

“Don’t forget me.”

“I’m the forgettable one.”

Morning came with her salty kisses desperately trying to imprint lips on his sleepy smile and all across his darling face.

“I’m scared.”

“Go be great.” He smiled softly and she closed the door.

 

At first they talked, but slowly the boy disappeared.

“Are you holding on?”

“It’s not something to hold onto. It’s just a truth. It’s how we are. One day.”

“But talk to me.”

 

Throwing pasta at the wall because maybe it will stick like paint.

 

“Love me.”

 

Silence.

 

One day she received a letter back from the boy. She read it exactly once and cut it into tiny squares less than a centimeter across that she used to soak up the tears she could no longer shed. Laying each one neatly in a line on the floor she mumbled a few indiscernible words and stacked them neatly in the corner of a box that she hid under her bed to save for one day.

Is there one day?

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