Letters That Brought Him Home

They promised not to stop writing letters, even when video calls were easier.

Even when life rushed forward faster than envelopes could travel. Kate wrote from

her kitchen table, ink smudged by late-night tears she refused to name. Mark wrote from

a narrow desk overseas, the edges of his paper creased from being folded and unfolded too many

times. They mailed pieces of ordinary life. A pressed leaf. A ticket stub.

A sketch of a street, he said, she’d love. But distance has a way of changing

handwriting. His letters grew shorter. Hers became heavier. One afternoon,

a letter arrived with no return address. Inside was a single sentence: “I don’t know how to love