Reading old letters gives me an uncomfortable tingle in my belly because they're all so full of honesty. The kind of honesty I'm now too embarrassed to express, like, the kind that used to fill my journals in grade school, oh the feeling they give me when I read them! It's like revisiting an old home that is now too small to contain me. And sometimes when I found things so warm or hilarious or sad I'd comment on them with different colored pens, only to realize those very comments may prove to be funny later too, so now when I open my crimson journal from seventh grade there's a chain of different colored pens commenting on each other's opinions like a choo choo train, hands on shoulder, following one path down to where I came from.

When I was moving into my new home I reread all the letters I'd received. It must have been at least a month ago, if not longer, that I plopped on my beige chair and started reading.

Perhaps it was what the letters said. Perhaps it was who wrote them. Maybe it was because some of those people had drifted from my life and could never write me a letter like that again. Maybe it's the sense of emotional impermanence I got from them.

It could also just be my imagination going wild. Something about imagining a person sitting down with a pen and letter paper to write evokes an incomparable sense of sincerity.

I thought to myself, do I deserve that? I didn't think I did. That made me sad, guilty, and when I cried I felt as though I was crying for all the lovers who had cared enough to write.

Guichanaso.