The Love Letter I Found in a Secondhand Book
It was folded into the pages of a poetry collection, forty years old.
I bought the book in a secondhand shop for two pounds, a collection of poems by a poet I had never heard of, published in 1978. It was the kind of book you buy for the cover, the kind of book that has been read so many times the spine has gone soft.
The letter was folded into the pages, a single sheet of airmail paper, the kind that is so thin it is almost transparent. It was dated 1979, and it was addressed to a woman named Margaret, and it was signed by a man named James.
It was not a love letter. It was a poem, written out in James's handwriting, a poem he had copied from the book and annotated with his own notes in the margins. He had underlined the lines he thought Margaret would like, and he had written 'this is us' next to one of them, and 'remember the beach' next to another.
I read the poem and I read the notes and I understood that James had sent Margaret the book as a letter, the poem as the message, the annotations as the way of saying 'I am thinking of you' without having to say it.
I don't know if Margaret ever got the letter. The book was in a secondhand shop, which means it was given away or sold or left behind. But the letter was still in it, forty years later, a small perfect thing that was never meant to be read by a stranger.
I keep the book on my shelf now. I don't read the poems often, but I read the letter sometimes. It is the best love letter I have ever read, and it was not meant for me, and that is the point. The best love letters are the ones that are meant for one person and found by another.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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