The other stays with me.
Safe.
Locked in my private post office box—the one Iearned, the one I paid for with blood and favors and things I don't let myself think about too carefully. My safety deposit box. My sacred storage.
The place where I keep every letter I've ever written to my pen pal, organized by date, preserved like the precious things they are.
Someone broke in.
Someone stole them.
Someone—
My eyes find a page hanging at eye level, and the words swim into focus through the tears I didn't realize were falling:
Dear S.W.,
It's been a week since your last letter, and I'm starting to worry. Not in a dramatic way—I know you have a life beyond writing to crazy girls—but in the quiet way that keeps me awake at 3 AM wondering if you're okay...
I remember writing that.
Three months ago, during a bad spell when the nightmares were constant and the only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that someone, somewhere, cared whether I existed.
Another page catches my attention:
...sometimes I wonder what your voice sounds like. Do you laugh easily? Do you get annoyed when people chew with their mouths open? Do you believe in ghosts? I do. I think my mother is one. She visits me in dreams sometimes, but she never speaks anymore...
That was from over a year ago.
A moment of vulnerability I never meant anyone to see except him.
Except S.W.
Except the one person I trusted with the broken, tender parts of myself.
And now?—
Now everyone can see.
I spin slowly, taking in the full scope of the horror.
Letters everywhere.
Five years of correspondence, displayed like laundry on a line.
Five years of secrets, confessions, fears, hopes—all of it exposed to the darkening sky and the approaching rain.
My private thoughts turned into a public spectacle.
My devotion, transformed into mockery.
Someone did this deliberately.
Someone stole my letters, read my letters, and decided to display them here, in a space where they knew I'd come.
Where they knew I'd see.
Where they knew I'dbreak.
