The Last Letter
Do you remember me? Have you seen me? I’m in doorways, along city streets, peppered on country roads often bent, broken and rusted from the top down. I’m now the past, with a very long history of receiving and sending mostly letters. Long before I was discovered and for those that have never seen me, I was the conduit between the mail carrier and you. Yes, you got mail from me. If you have seen me, you know I have held some of the most wondrous and even heart breaking communications in history. Your DNA has traveled across cities, states and continents on the corners of those envelopes and behind the neatly placed stamp.
Are you lucky enough to remember when you ran to me with an excitement that filled your universe, like no time before, or as it turned out, after, from the anticipation of that first letter you knew was coming? You came to me that afternoon and reached your hand into my metal shelter where I always protected and kept the sealed secrets safe without a lock, some encryption sequence or face ID. At my best time, I was shiny and new, my red flag stood out like a beacon. I was beloved and respected but as the years passed I was forgotten, unattended, faded and abandoned, and it wasn’t anything I did. Things like that just happen. So keep shining, keep believing, in days of momentous anticipation where your excitement filled your universe.
Frank G. Caruso
