The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

It is the correspondence that is her manner of living.

Furthermore, how embarrassingly paltry of Debbie to discuss “overthrowing” the secretary of a garden club, why if it isn’t Napoleon Bonaparte herself—warm

As you can see, your simple question does not have a simple answer.

wonder, Harry, are you asking if I am lonely because you are trying to find a way to tell me that you are? Don’t worry, dear. You can simply tell me.

So that’s where this all began. You would think I’d have it down to memory by now, but for some reason the only part that stays word for word in memory is the bit about being born at dawn under a pink sunrise. Isn’t that lovely? Makes me miss a thing I never really had.

As if one family’s horror is some kind of spectacle the rest of us have right to observe. Let the family print an obituary for the poor child if it’s what they choose, but to print a thing like that. To make shark bait of someone’s life. Have you no soul within your cold chest?

as I’m sure you are inundated with correspondence from readers.

human experience—isolation, loneliness. It makes me wonder about the pain you have obviously suffered in your life.

I was worked up and I often find myself behaving with less civility over e-mail, and now as I type this I do feel rather ashamed of that carelessness.

There are hundreds of letters, into the thousands I expect, and to think, each one has a counterpart somewhere,

The four of us came away injured, but is there any other way for a person to come through? Oh, Gilbert. I do hope there is a heaven as I have always believed. I hope I will see him and know him there. I believe I’ve been looking forward to death on one hand.

I cannot take back things I said to you in those early dark days. Oh, that we could have the wisdom of age earlier!

The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it?