January 3rd
It snowed again last night.
Not poetically, though. It fell like ash, as if the sky had finally given up and collapsed in on itself. Now everything is the same colour, the roads, trees, the bones beneath the floorboards. White has a way of erasing context. The mailbox looks almost holy.
I arrived yesterday, but I didn’t step outside until this morning. The house is colder than I remember. The windows are crooked. The wallpaper is blistering off in places, curling like paper in flame. I lit the old fireplace. It coughed before it breathed.
I wrote the first letter at dawn. No sign-off. Just words that scratched at the inside of my skull all night. I folded it three times, sealed it, stamped it. Walked barefoot through the snow to the box. My skin cracked on contact with the metal.
Of course, no one will collect it. There’s no one left. But I needed to start somewhere.
You would have liked it here. It’s the kind of silence you used to call honest. Something that doesn’t beg for attention.
You would have loved the way this house forgets things.
January 6
I dreamt of the maple tree again that split in half during that summer storm. In the dream, it was whole. You were standing beneath it, scarf undone; head tilted like you were listening to something deep in the frost.
You were barefoot again. Always barefoot in dreams. You never liked shoes.
When I called out, the air swallowed my voice. I heard it, but from behind me.
I wrote you another letter today. I used the blue ink – the one you said looked like veins bursting beneath skin. Addressed it to the old flat on Lamont Street. You remember the one? The skylight that leaked. The windows that sang in the wind.
I tucked it into the box before sunrise.
I don’t expect it to go anywhere.
But I check the box every evening now.
Just in case.
January 9
The snow hasn’t stopped. It piles against the windows like it’s trying to get in, or maybe trying to seal me in. I keep thinking of the word suffocate. It repeats in my head like a heartbeat, like the sound of your breathing used to when I couldn’t sleep.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? The quiet doesn’t feel honest anymore. It feels watched.
There was a sound last night. Not the creaking you can rationalise in old houses. No. This was deliberate and rhythmic. A tap. Then a pause. Then two more.
I held my breath so hard I forgot to let go.
It stopped after a while. Or maybe I just fell asleep in fear.
I didn’t write yesterday. The words were rotting before I could catch them. I sat with the pen in my hand for hours. I don’t know if I was asleep or dissociating. I don’t know if there’s a difference anymore.
I didn’t sign the last letter either. I don’t think I’m ready to see my name in ink.
I remember the way your mouth would twitch before a lie.
I remember all the lies you told and how I forgave them just to keep you real.
And now I wonder if this grief is just me dragging your ghost through every day because I’m not ready to let the dead do what they’re supposed to:
stay gone.
January 12
There was something in the mailbox this morning.
Not snow.
Not junk.
A letter.
No stamp or sender. Just my name in handwriting that mimics yours, but wrong and too clean, as though someone is learning cursive from memory instead of habit.
I haven’t opened it yet.
It sits on the mantle, heavy in its stillness. The air hums around it. Like it’s waiting because it knows I’ll cave.
Maybe this is a sick joke. Or a delayed hallucination? A punishment perhaps?
Maybe it’s you.
If it is, what would you even say?
No.
That’s not the right question.
If it’s you,
why now?
January 13
I’ve been pacing around the letter like it’s an animal I don’t trust. It hasn’t moved, but I swear it’s breathing. The corners curl when I’m not looking. The envelope feels like skin instead of paper, translucent in light, veins spidering under the surface. I held it up to the fireplace glow and thought I saw a pulse.
Maybe I’m losing it.
Maybe this house is unpeeling me layer by layer.
You used to say our minds were delicate machinery. Once the wrong gear slips, the whole thing ticks backwards.
What gear did I lose, love? Was it when they lowered you into the ground and the sound didn’t match the weight in my chest? Was it when no one else showed up? Not even your mother. Not even me, really – I think I left before the service ended. My body stayed though. My mind just wandered off and never returned.
I touched the envelope just now. The paper flinched.
No one will believe me. No one’s left to believe me.
I don’t think the letter is meant to be read.
I think it’s meant to be heard.
There’s something moving behind the walls tonight. Not the house shifting. Something slower. More aware.
Like it’s waiting for me to open it.
Like the letter is a key.
Or a door? A trap?
I stared at it for so long, I started to see your face reflected in the window.
But your eyes were wrong.
Too wide and too hungry.
It’s still sitting on the mantle, you know. Still unopened.
But now the snow’s stopped.
And the footprints on the porch aren’t mine.
January 14
I opened the letter.
I wish I could say I read it, but that’s not quite right. The moment I broke the seal, the room changed. Not visually but in the bones of things. The fireplace died mid-breath. The walls exhaled and the silence turned inside out.
It wasn’t written in ink. It wasn’t even words, really.
It was you. Your voice, as I remembered it. Hoarse, sarcastic, always half a joke away from crying. But it said things you never said. Things you would never say.
It started with my name.
Then came the apology.
Then the instructions.
There were no threats, just certainty. And I followed it. Like I always did.
The letter burned itself once I was done.
No ash.
I haven’t slept since. I don’t think I’m meant to anymore.
The mirror won’t reflect me and the clocks won’t tick when I’m in the room.
I think I’ve become part of the house.
Or maybe it’s become part of me.
The mailbox is full again. With letters I don’t remember writing.
All addressed to names I almost recognize.
Maybe I’ve always lived here.
Maybe you never died.
Maybe I did.
There’s something scratching at the back door now.
It knows I opened the letter.
It knows I listened.
I’m not alone anymore.
But I was never meant to be.
Not after the reply.
