The Letter

There is a letter, quite a long one, in fact. Since I can’t show it to you, I shall describe it. It is handwritten, in ballpoint pen, in a sprawling, unfamiliar script, covering both sides of a sheet of graph paper, probably ripped from a child’s exercise book. You can see it was written in a hurry, perhaps in the dark, possibly in secret. I say “in secret” because, in places, words have extended over the edge of the page. Tear stains smudge occasional words into illegible scallops of fading blue ink.

The letter was given to me by a girl named Ruggia. She handed it to me the other day while I was having tea with her. As her mother left the room to brew another pot, Ruggia leaned over and whispered to me, “I wrote something for you last night.”

And with a swift glance toward her mother’s…