Envelope

The envelope box sits half open on my desk. Merely a dollar. Blue, fairly new, and missing one. I think about all the letters that are meant to fill those envelopes, the hope that was purchased along with it.

Being far from the home I once knew has me feeling nostalgic. I think of the letters I used to write, the letters I once received; written pieces of manifested thought. I recall the tears once spilled upon the pages, the scent of perfume and pain. I wonder sometimes what he did with those letters.

Burned them I think.

Perhaps they sit in the middle of a landfill, still in that messenger bag he kept them in. Someday they will build upon it the foundations of a park, or it will become the future digsite of some distant society.

Maybe, he recycled them in his guilt. In the process of wiping me clean from his life, tossed my words into the paper shredder and recycled with the rest of the junk mail and bills. Those in turn were broken down, stripped and mashed into pulp. In time they are sold, reformed, and transformed; shipped to a distant land and has purpose once again.

Now my old envelopes sit upon my desk, in the half opened box, waiting to begin again.