The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

He was a high school teacher (one of the only people I’ve ever met who always, without fail, places a comma correctly—EVERY TIME—and English is his third language)

It's sweet to think about the small odds and ends we truly cherish in other people.

Grief shared, I think, can produce two outcomes. Either you bind yourselves together and hold on for dear life, or you let go and up goes a wall too high to be crossed. For us it was the latter.

I still loved him, I suppose. I just couldn’t bear him.

but I’m coming because you are scaring me with your miserable crotchetiness.

From the outside I’m sure he looks like a brainless slug, but he is my partner. Putting him in a home feels like surrendering. Like I’ll be giving all that up.

When I started writing to you, it was in an effort to live—not just shrivel up and die—and it’s worked. It’s kept you beside me.