More Love Letters in The World

I was shopping in an antique store recently. There was a massive letter cabinet, one of the old ones with a million wooden drawers. Some drawers were labeled: maps, postcards, stationary, book pages, love letters. In the drawer of love letters was a small stack tied with a green ribbon. It was a dozen letters that a woman named Lucile saved until what I assume was her death. At which point her things were maybe sold off, and in a drawer somewhere she kept this stack of letters, and now here they were on an uncomfortably warm afternoon in my hands. I bought them. I took them home. I felt on the edge of a Nicholas Sparks movie.

Some of the letters I cannot make out. The pencil is so faded that only etchings remain on the soft pages. They are all from the same man named Elliot, and from what I can gather were written over a period of five years in the early 60’s when they were separated for reasons unnamed. She was in California, but I cannot tell where he wrote from. In one letter he was on a train. In another he was writing at night. In another, a restaurant. They were for the most part simple and mundane and described his day or what the weather was like or what he missed about California. And still, there was something incredibly intimate about these letters, that were absolutely in fact, love letters. They just were not the kind of love letters you imagine right away.

At the end of every letter he wrote. I miss you more than I have words for. I love you more than I have life for. And I count the minutes until I return. Simple and yet incredibly romantic and in that moment, our friend Elliot was redeemed every single time, and his love made clear and his letter full of love through the simple details of his life.

I suppose this is less of a writing prompt and more a story about writing. A reminder that there is no act of writing too small or meaningless. It always matters. There should be more love letters in the world. Go write one.