The Letter I Will Never Read
When I turned ten, we moved to a quaint subdivision that was nestled in the periphery of the city.
Outside, everything was unruly — from the throngs of cars and jeepneys crawling lethargically along the grimy streets, to the troops of children yelling boisterously among themselves, all of them charged with a frenetic energy that never seemed to dwindle.
But our village was another story altogether. In fact, the moment you stepped inside, prepare to be transported to a wholly different world.
Here, the vast roads were usually vacated, except for the vehicles whizzing by every now and then and the dried leaves fluttering in the biting wind. In the gutters, you wouldn’t catch a glimpse of kids playing to their hearts’ content. You wouldn’t hear a trace of their raucous laughter, their lively voices.
There was only silence, a forbidding silence that I had come to detest.
I was ten years old, for crying out loud. Sure, I was more withdrawn than most kids my age, but that didn’t mean I’d derive pleasure in being solitary for days and days on end, in being confined in my room, flanked by my drab little toys. It didn’t help that my mind would constantly hearken back to my life in our old home, back when I was constantly surrounded by my playmates, back when my daily existence was marked by bliss and adventure.
And so I decided to be more proactive and to seek companions on my own.
Only it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
As I mentioned earlier, the streets were eerily empty. I often biked around the subdivision, braving the scorching heat, seeking even a single soul, but to no avail.
It was as though I was strolling around a ghost town.
It was incredibly frustrating, but I wasn’t the type to give up easily.
And because I was ingenious and peculiar, I came up with a way to lure in some friends.
I took advantage of the plants sparsely lining the pavements. Up until now, I don’t have the slightest notion on what it’s called. It had tufts of stiff leaves jutting out from the ground, like aloe vera, but they were much larger, probably around my knees in height.
Know what I did?
I gingerly placed a letter in between the leaves, just enough for it to be spotted by discerning eyes, but not enough for it to be conspicuous to every passerby.
I don’t remember what I wrote exactly, but it must have been a heartrending lament about why I sorely needed a companion (just kidding).
Every morning, while biking around the subdivision, I would surreptitiously glance at my plant. But it remained faithfully glued between the leaves, a speck of white against the Prussian greens. Oftentimes, I felt foolish and was tempted to yank it out, to crumple it or to shred it to pieces, but I willed myself to be patient.
Then after a few days, something happened.
The paper vanished.
I panicked and was filled with fear — could the gardener have removed it? Or perhaps some adult who was now chortling at my silliness?
But then, lo and behold, just when I was starting to be overwhelmed by despair, I eventually saw it — a piece of yellowish paper stuck clumsily between the leaves. Yes, yellow.
I dashed towards it excitedly, almost tumbling on my feet. My hands were trembling so much that I didn’t notice at once how damp the paper was. And when I unfolded the letter, all I could see was a bunch of gibberish lines and smudges. On the corner, there were still vestiges of the trickling ink, of the words that the rain had cruelly wiped away, of the letter that I would never read.
Fate does have a way of being callous sometimes.
