zesty_pinto | "The Message"

A letter escaped a man's pocket for reasons that one could never say unless they were there. It flapped to the ground, folded into a worn envelope that was almost frayed open from years of wear within its prison. Gravity tore the old prison into two, freeing the white sheet to the ground as it twirled towards the grate of a subway, before the jets of a train-powered steam unfurled the letter into an eggshell sky.

Fully freed, it began to climb the air, soon, floating before soaring over the heads of man and its machines, darting through the traffic of mankind's trails from overhead as one would see ants. As it whippored through the currents of the skyscraper canyon and danced with the birds, it came upon a green clearing, where the air grew less dense and peace began to settle its paper wings, finally floating peacefully besides a man who sat in a bench.

She looked at the sheet and saw its body tattooed in many words covered and rewritten. Her curiosity overpowered his xenophobia and tentatively picked it up to read what was on it.

"Dear Hilde,

As I write these words, I know I could not hold on to these words to say to you forever. These words have failed me as easily now as they had thirty years ago when I saw you off to that plane. I no longer know where you are, and forgive me if I never will, so I will keep this letter with me until that chance should come.

I know you have always thought of me as the friend who has helped you during your struggles and my own. I remember those smiles you have given me as readily as my own shoulders to lean on when you lost your fiance and your first son. Never once did I want to say that I wish it was me that took your hand and tried to become that man who would look through your life, and perhaps I never will. Please do not take this anything more than the reflections of a man who has become too old to know any youthful passion. I know what my mistake was, and that was never going with you on that plane. I suppose I was afraid at the time. I think I was afraid of disappointing you.

Do you remember Carl's? I think that was when I really saw you as something more than my neighbor. The lights of the neon sign brought out the brown nature of your eyes and I saw them glow brighter with an intensity I could never touch. You danced to the music in the diner as though it was a club, and I laughed that time not because I enjoyed the moment as much as I enjoyed watching you. Were I to see you now, I am sure that life would never leave your eyes, or else I would lose something in myself too. I know that were I to ask you to have stayed, or to have left with you, then I would put the life in those eyes in the risk of my actions. I love you too much to have that control.

That is why I write this letter to you. You may never receive it, and that would be fine. But I carry this as a reminder of you. I no longer have photos of our moments together, but as long as there is a memory written here, I will have you always in the pictures of my mind."

The woman folded the letter carefully away with care towards its fragile edges. She smiled and thought out to the sky before she reached in her purse for an envelope and folded the letter within it before she called an old friend. The message, not received but perhaps its purpose made.