The Mail, II

It has been too long since I've posted. Every early morning on the drive to work, my head is filled with so many things I want to say here. It has been a hard few weeks, and in addition, Cordelia has been out there, auditioning for some of those lateral options she spoke of, and trying to engineer her way back up the ladder as well.

So, the mail, the package sent out bearing its symbolic little chocolates. In the mail, in my mail, comes a note, the daffodil stamp matching the beautiful sketch of a yellow bird on the notecard within. Thank you, she says, for thinking of me ---and I wonder, does she mean of him ? She had forgotten about that until the package arrived, she says, and I feel bad for a moment that I reminded her and maybe made her sad. But that's not what she's telling me, is it ? What I realize is how much I had waited for some response, how I waited, in small and subtle ways, the ten days between sending and receiving, holding potential rejection in abeyance, how the return card means so much. It will be too hard, soon, to risk writing at all. She had phoned once, so had I. Too many things we don't or won't risk talking about; could mean the little notes are gone forever.

I dream of it all sometimes, tea and watching his hands, my office and the trees, the way we'd all talk. Then I get up in the dark, make my espresso, and drive to work, so much to say, so much lost, between dawn and the sea.