- 2020 Volume 15
prose
The rain-splattered letter arrived at 6:02 the morning after she hid the last corner of her room with words. She opened the envelope, fetched another tack, and searched for an empty patch of wall, forgetting she’d covered the last spot yesterday. Once she remembered, she pinned the letter to the ceiling instead. She laid on her back on her bed to read it. The ink-stained rainwater dripped off the letter onto her lips. It tasted of lemon pancakes, hot cocoa with a peppermint stick, a labrador on your lap and an old film on the screen. Everything tasted like lemon pancakes and hot cocoa nowadays, and lemon pancakes and hot cocoa tasted like “not anymore.”
The letter was written twelve years ago, and her hair was dyed with grey water by the time she’d read it all. She sighed, got off her bed, and found her quill (a gift from a dozen birthdays ago—she used to love old things). With the ink drizzling from her hair, then the ink from a little bottle, she scratched out a reply.
She folded up her response, slipped it into the damp envelope, and set it in her mailbox. Then she went back inside to wash her hair.
Photo by Garrett Glasgow