Lost Letters

I fear letters are becoming a lost art. Not that mine are all that “artful.” The intention of putting down words, drawing out pen strokes, worrying over spelling, or just dashing out mistakes.

There is an intimacy in the overlooked misspelling, in the way my b’s and p’s tend to take each other’s place, in the rush of getting out a thought the unessential “the” or “is” is forgotten.

I think there’s a reason the letters of great thinkers are collected. Without an editor’s shape, a letter leaves exposed all the rough edges. I suppose that’s what draws me to writing here. I don’t often re-edit, I think about content often, but try to release rather than labor.

 

Collecting flowers a few weeks back, I held them thinking of a friend. A friend who shared a special time in my life while studying abroad in El Salvador. She is getting married this weekend, and I can’t be there. As I dried the flowers I thought of the sun setting over the city, while we ran our feet through the grass and talked about philosophy.

Where we held hands in the dark, fumbling our way back to the house, sharing laughs and walking with complete openness toward a just as completely uncertain path.

How those people in your life, whether for a day, or a few months, or over years, are deeply carved into your heart. How the influence of moments, the inescapable yet intangible now, emerges in points of light. At once within time, and utterly separate from it.

With a letter, an extension of self, I pull at those points, trying to bend the light with the mirror of my current reality; or perhaps trying to see it as it once was, through the bends and cracks since I was within it.

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Dispatch this week to Grace and Alex, happiness and always love.