You don’t know me: Post Office

A series connecting strangers

The ring of the dainty bell still hung in the air as my eyes adjusted from the bright sun.

The line snaked dutifully through the maze laid out for it, longer than necessary thanks to a flu keeping everyone at a distance. When I took my turn, the clerk and those behind me scoffed at my whispered request:

“One stamp, please…and direct me to your phone books?”

Finger point.

“Thirty-three cents.”

I carefully thumbed through the volume, thinner than my town’s. Too thin to be much use as a booster for a child. Too thin to do much damage as a weapon. My finger skimmed until I found the one that used to be mine, back when things like last names didn’t mean much to someone my age.

Click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-click-click. My thumb flicked anxiously at the retractable pen. I licked the envelope. The glue was as acid as the words it guarded inside. I decided against a return address. Return addresses are for correspondence, and I wasn’t interested in any. Somehow, I’d driven across two states to deliver this message and only made it to this building, this brick building with the same enormous flag outside and the same clipboard with the same most-wanted men that I had back home.

Click-click. Click-click-click.

I filled in the address, the name feeling foreign to me. I wove each cursive letter together with the same sort of hope and skepticism that might come along with sending it off to The President of The United States.

Three digits on the zip…the tail of the snake shook its rattle.

“Excuse me. Miss? Do you have the time? I have a doctor’s appointment.”

Click.

I saw your eyes, your same old eyes — two perfect circles the color of dragonfly wings. The colors that are never still. The wings that kept you flying. Flying away.

I have the same eyes. I wondered if you’d notice. I wondered if you’d see the dragonfly colors, or if you’d think they were more like a peacock feather or the secret locked away in an abalone shell.

“It’s 10:27. Your knee? Or your pancreas?”

“What are you, some kind of witch?”

The dainty bell rang one last time as I tossed the envelope and my thirty three cents’ postage in the trash.

You don’t know me, but I am your daughter.

Here are two pieces I loved by two writers I adore, augustkhalilibrahim and Jules. Check them out.