Dear Rose,
Even though I detest you, I still check my mailbox every week when the mailman comes by. Not hoping; necessarily; and not expecting, just checking. Every time he comes (he’s a gangly old man with a birdlike nose and a tired look in his eyes and a brilliant smile) I come walking out while he sorts through all the parcels and letters and puts them in all the right boxes. I say hi to him and he says hi back and smiles at me with his nice smile I can see in the corners of his eyes, and then he hands me my mail directly. I’m the only one who talks to him besides the dogs who want to kill him. I can’t remember his name, but he told me about his grandkids once. I can’t remember their names either, or why he told me about them. I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll ask him about it next time he comes around.
Anyways, I always walk back inside before I look at the mail. It’s a ritual at this point - I wait until the door is closed firmly behind me to sort through the pile, and I know, each time, that it will just be junk mail and more junk mail. Like, I really know. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I know, and yet still I’m addicted to that rush from looking under each letter in the stack to see if any are from you. I don’t ever even expect them to be, it’s just that fucking what if? What if I’m wrong? What if you surprise me? What if you’ve changed and gotten better and want me to know? What if you decide to write me back after all this time just to tell me that you hate me too? A large part of me wants you to; to do any of those things. A larger part of me is glad you don’t - because when I’m not thinking about you; when I’m not talking to the mailman or shuffling through junk mail or looking at a broken bridge in the woods or when I haven’t caught a stray scent that reminds me of your house, I’m happier. I am so much happier when I can’t remember how much I love you.
And these letters that I write for you? They aren’t for you. That’s why I ripped up the last one and burned the one before that and crumpled the one before that into as small and dense of a little ball I could before tossing it in grand olympic fashion into the waste bin. These letters I write for you are committed to oblivion before they’re even conceived, and that is the very sperm of their conception to begin with. I write to you because I have no choice but to do so. You are the cliff I throw myself off the edge of each week, dear Rose. And once my body hits the ground, I pick myself up and walk back up to the top of the cliff where I live, and I check the mailbox.