Open Letter to Human Who Stole and Returned My U.P.S. Package
What’s yours comes back to you.
Last Tuesday, I tracked my U.P.S. package, only to find that it had been delivered the day before.
My father had tightly wrapped my winter coat around some of my most precious personal items and sent them overseas. Coming from Bolivia, these little treasures had traveled far to make their way to New York City.
After calling a U.P.S. customer service agent, I discovered that my package had mysteriously disappeared from my doorstep. I frantically knocked on my neighbor’s doors to check if perhaps there had been a mistake, but nothing. Silence.
The next day, I used my faculty’s fancy printers to churn out 45 black and white flyers. I pasted them all over Myrtle Avenue and Bushwick station with the following note:
“LOST PACKAGE , Will be rewarded if returned. You will not be judged, even if you don’t return all the items, you will be treated with gratitude for returning something that is so precious to me.
Sincerely,
687 Bushwick”
In our age of hyperconnectivity, I ironically had to resort to faith and the printing press to reach someone who did not want to be found. I took the weekend upstate to gather my thoughts and feelings and wrote the following letter to the box thief.
Dear fellow human,
I awaken to the sound of an old creaking train, and it reminds me that life is not the same since I moved here. I’ve lived a carefree youth and have been gently birthed into womanhood. In the last two years, I’ve come into my own rythm. I’ve awakened to a sense of body, that I did not know was available to me. I’ve found that I’ve been able to caress a sunset by breathing in deeply. Hold…Sometimes I wait patiently for the grass to find its way between the space that separates one of my toes from the other. I’ve rested under the warmth of a setting sun, I’ve grown roots and I’ve stretched my arms wide to hold as much life as I can muster.
I carry my life gently cupped between two hands like a migratory bird, pirched on the third story of a mid-rise building. High enough to observe the streets of Manhattan from a distance, but close enough to fear its predatory instinct.
I am fresh blood.
This blood rushes to my head as I’ve been robbed of little pieces of myself. And I’m so angry, so angry that you dared take a piece of my home for yourself, or worse still — to sell to the highest bidder on eBay. So, since the chances of return seem dire, and since you may not see what I see…I’ll put it into writing:
1. A small wooden box with fading blue-green paint. The two ornamented side doors will open to reveal a hand-painted ceramic tile of a “diabla” — a little she-devil. In my country, the diabla is a stronghold of indigenous female power, surviving colonial attempts to convince us that Mary must be meek and chaste. The word “amuki” —silence in Aymara — is inscribed on the bottom of the box. The labour of poetry is to hang around words to hear what they might be saying. This one — a reminder that there is power in stillness. Just as nothingness precedes creation, so too does the womb birth new life by blessing the space between us.
2. A framed photograph of an empty blue room with a window peering into the Saharan desert. You will see an empty red chair on one side, and the only hint of life — a translucent curtain momentarily lifted by the rare desert breeze. Windows are special to me because it is through these unwatched spaces that we truly reach each other — their intimacy allows a stranger to become a lover, and a landscape to become home.
3. A stuffed animal reminiscent of the Bolivian “Pepino” — a burlesque carnival character known to chase onlookers and tease the unprepared. Playfulness is vital because it alchemizes hardship into potential.
4. A blue journal with a handpainted fairy that my father gifted me when I was twelve. Over the years, it has captured my most intimate confessions, my crazy ideas, my learning process, and my poetry. My most valued possession, I suppose, is of no value to you. But if you hold it with gentleness, you might just enter the neighborhood of a very subtle otherness. It’s a question of beauty and our ability to touch aliveness through words.
I know, I know these are just objects but they brought me closer to home, and it breaks my heart that I will never see these little kaleidoscopic pieces of myself again. Since it’s impossible to speak to you directly, I turn to blank pages to preserve these memories. As if the practice of naming them might restore what they really stood for, a reflection of the playfulness of this spirit and the depth of this soul.
A box
After a restoring weekend and a well-written letter, I had made peace with the situation — letting go of any remaining hopes of recovering the missing package. So after a two-hour-long bus ride, a transfer through the L line, and a ten-minute walk through a downpour, the last thing I expected to see upon arriving home was a cardboard box — just as soaked as I was. There it was, perfectly square and with my name inked on it. I could tell that someone had opened it by the way it had been clumsily closed. However, drawing one item at a time, I found everything intact.
I’ll never have the whole story
I’ll never know how the box disappeared after being delivered, only to wind up back at my doorstep a week later. All I know is that what is yours will find its way back to you. It will come back through lousy U.P.S. tracking, empty subway stations, and downpours. So now, I’ve printed another 45 flyers and plastered them around Myrtle avenue and Bushwick. This time though, with the sole purpose of saying thank you to a kind stranger.
