Deliverance

The mail arrived at my door one morning, lost, and knocked until I answered. Ink bled from her nail beds but her dotted eyes were steady. I let her in, of course I let her in, how could I refuse? Sharp corners of postcards poked my hands as I wound bandages around hers. She kissed me, then, with a sealing wax mouth. We enveloped each other without a second thought.

It meant something to ruffle my hands through the enjambment of all the letters that never arrived and smooth their stamps. My fingertips could almost braille the words through their envelopes, and I felt her inhale whenever I brushed over a particularly sensitive one. Her breath smelled like freshly printed paper. I couldn’t get close enough to it. Love, I wanted to say. But she had so much of that already.

She left in the night. I woke with hair-thin paper cuts on my inner thighs, the faint taste of glue lingering dryly on my tongue. My reaching hands closed around a single envelope, addressed to me in a familiar curving script.

Love, it said.

I was at her door by morning, trying to be found. I knocked. She opened.