Letter To An Unknown Soldier

Freya Finch Atter, Student

I am the lady in charge of odd parcels, blurry writing, the not-quite right addresses. I am the investigator, the letter opener, the get-things-running-smoothly woman. I wear a loose uniform and heels that dig in when I walk. I have auburn, curly hair. My mother called me ‘homely’ once. There are seven drawers in my desk, three down the sides and one across the middle. The bottom right is devoted to you.

There is something thrilling about the tearing of envelopes not meant for your hands. A quick scan- and quick it is, I promise you. I don’t want to pry- down the words to find addresses, names, ranks, platoons. The clues are threaded together and the letter moves on, or plunges into the bin beside me. Something always feels wrong about binning those, though.

When I found the first letter addressed to ‘the girls at home depot’ I laughed. Of all the people you could write to, you write to us. I read it out loud on a break, you were so flirty then. Charming and witty like a poet, our warrior poet out on the lines. And punctual too, we looked forward to loopy handwriting on a Wednesday morning. Then you began to change.

Our happy bard grew sad. The letters became too painful to read out, so I locked them in my drawer and left them for days. Something was private about your suffering. After a while I stopped opening the letters.

The letters have stopped. I should have realised sooner, I know. It must be cruel of me, this shameless word-reader, to have left your letters lonely for so long. I resolved myself to burning them in secret, freeing my heart of the burden that is you, my dear tommy. But first, I needed to read.

Sneaking out of the workplace was a cause of some terror for me. I am the girl who is punctual, polite, the early-arrival-who-opens-the-windows. I am not the girl who sneaks out the back door, past the ladies smoking ration cigarettes and to the relative safety of a book store.

I think you must have died. How could you do that to me, without sending so much as a name to call you by? No face to match the words, no frame to fill the hole your letters have left me. My tall soldier, small soldier, blonde soldier, brunette soldier. My lost solider, my found soldier, my brave soldier, my letter-composing coward. I know everything about you, yet I know nothing. How can you mourn someone you cannot prove existed or died? Yet I do, I do.

I am the daughter who aches, who pried, who longs. I am the sister who animates you, runs with you, fights with you and buries you. I am the one who laughs, and cries, and curls up into a ball at the thought of you. I am the one who misses you.

Come to home depot, my silent soldier. I’ll be waiting.

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