They had spoken once, or rather had tried to. The volumes hidden behind the sealed flaps of envelopes, or neatly folded over single sheets once held meaning. They were meant to convey something, but they never did. They were each born out of purpose, a confession here, an apology there, some rants screaming with hoarse voices and even a few sobbing, choking apologies. They’re all here, all waiting, to be picked up by a postmaster who won’t ever come for them. They are waiting, forever.
The building is an awe-inspiring structure, reaching great heights. It stands grand at the edge of the cliff where no one ever comes. The whole place is swathed in the never fading glow of the burning twilight, and the building faces the forever setting sun, as if contemplating between life and death, never falling one way or another.
Inside the walls, it’s gloom personified. It’s quiet, not even a creak can be heard. The ceilings stretch up into an abyss, dark and still from which nothing escapes, but of course, nothing can really soar that high.
Then there are the letters, strewn all over the place, countless of them. They form heaps, sorted by some clandestine order that knows no bounds of reason, and follows no chain of command. The letters lay scattered on the floor; hang by invisible silk threads, spun by the greedy spiders of time. Some even fly around on a wind without direction, that can’t be felt by anyone or anything.
I see the postmaster inside the grand hall. He roams around the space, apparently listless, without thought. Looks like he lives here, but couldn’t care less for the letters. I approach him and he turns to me, a gentle smile plays on his lips, without anything real behind them, it seems.
“Who brings the letters here?” I ask, cautiously.
“They arrive here on their own when they die,” he tells me, “and yet, they are not the souls of what they once were. The newer ones bury the old ones with themselves, and yet, they are more than just corpses.”
I realize that the postmaster plays a slightly bigger role than I first thought. He may not be the carer he looks like by his uniform, he’s more of a witness. I also understand that this isn’t as much of a graveyard as a sanctuary. There is something profound hidden here. An overwhelming desire to escape lives chained among the walls, and also here lurks an inescapable dread of hopelessness being crushed among the heaps.
I go deeper inside, driven by a curiosity as much as a sense of obligation to do some kind of justice. What that’s going to be, I do not know, but I guess I’ll figure that out once I’m where I’m supposed to be. I picked up a bunch of letters from the nearest desk I could reach. I stack them in my palm on the right side.
They’re all similar and yet slightly different. Some feel pristine to touch, and look the part too. Some have stamps as well — intended to go far, beyond the borders maybe. They all bear an address that they failed to reach. I asked the postmaster why they didn’t reach their destination. He implores me to read the ‘To’ addresses a little more carefully. The sad smile is still on his lips.
To,
My Mistakes, Unsettled.
To,
My Love, My Heart, & My Soul.
To,
You, who will be me.
Each one is addressed to a concept or a construct. I didn’t notice the postmaster coming up to me. “Not all of them are like that. Some refer to real people too.” He picks up a seemingly random one from the same desk, and hands it to me.
To,
Vivaan,
.
The Day Before Our Trip to Seattle.
“Is that—is that addressed to a point in time?” I ask, only to find the postmaster holding another one up for me to see.
To
Shruti,
.
A Dark Corner of My Heart.
“And that is addressed to a place within someone.” He says once I look back up at his face. “Every letter here is one of those two forms. They’re not as much a conveyance of thoughts and words than a desire to let someone know something. A desire that was never acted upon.”
I decided to open one and read. Which, indeed, feels like the vilest of violations, yet, I can’t shake this need to read at least one of them. When I have made up my mind though, I find I am unable to choose one. It’s the kind of indecision I have never felt before. Again, as if reading my thoughts, the postmaster produces a bunch, seemingly from thin air. “Here, if you want to read some, take these.”
I am happy with this random selection being done for me. I take the three letters he hands me and flip them around. One is crisp, all corners sharp, with a wax seal keeping the envelope flap locked in place. Another is just a folded sheet, slightly yellowed and a little crumpled. As if it were kept in a pocket for a long time. And the last one is just a postcard, larger than normal, with a picture of a flower vase on one side with red and white flowers in it. They’re flowers that I don’t recognise but they have their own charm. I pick the postcard as my first perusal, and put the rest on the desk — it’s somehow empty all of a sudden.
To,
You who doesn’t listen,
But thinks a lot.
The east window,
Library, B-Wing.
Date: July 29, 2023.
I know you have thought about all of this. I know you’ve spent countless hours imagining what the future holds. I know you have, at one time, believed that it’s all a mistake and a game that you should stop immediately.
But trust me, so have I. I too, have thought all that and have tried to tell you in my own way. You have never listened to me. You believed me to be in opposition, filled with passions that you couldn’t find within yourself. You went looking for them.
You didn’t want to realise that the proof of your own love was already there, right in front of you. You just had to look into my eyes and hear my words. If only you’d have stopped to listen, it could all have been better than the finest things we’ve felt together.
I know you have tried very hard to build a life with me, a life for me. And in doing that, you have given me everything I could ever wish for and showed me some wonders I could never imagine. What I am trying to say is that you need not have put in that much effort, because in trying to do so, you failed to give me the one thing I wanted most.
Time.
Yours,
The Girl Behind the Shelf.
I know immediately that this letter, and all three of them, are for me. I know the date, I know what the library is — it’s not where books are kept waiting. I know what the shelf is and I know what the window means.
I look at the postmaster, waiting for an explanation. And like the enigma he is, he tells me in a cryptic way, “What you wish to learn now is in the other two.”
“So, you have read them.”
“No.”
“Then how do you—”
“It’s just the way it is here, it’s what my curse is.”
I look at the other two letters on the desk. I don’t dare open them right away, but I know I have to.
Soon.
The Pilfered Diaries 
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