Letters I Never Sent

Margaret found the letters on a Thursday, which was inconvenient, because Thursday was when she did the better sort of cleaning and preferred not to be interrupted by her own life.

They were in the desk she had stopped opening, tied with a ribbon that had once been red. The first envelope said only, For later. She sat on the edge of the bed and laughed, a short sound, because later had arrived without making an appointment.

She did not read them all at once. She was not a woman who drank a whole pot to prove she could. She read the second letter, which began, I am sorry I left the porch light on, as if that were the trouble.

Outside, a neighbor dragged a trash can to the curb. Margaret put the ribbon back. She would read one a day, she decided, and if the person they were meant for still lived in the world, she would decide then whether later included a stamp.