Paper Hearts

Mira had always known the price of words.

She learned it not from books, but from bills stacked on the kitchen counter, from her mother’s tired sighs late at night, and from the weight of being too young to carry so much. Her father had left when she was just a child, and her mother—once a poet with a gentle soul—had traded verse for overtime. Poetry didn’t pay for heating or medicine.

By seventeen, Mira had started writing. Not diaries or poems for herself, but love letters for strangers. A friend mentioned a website where people bought custom-written letters, apologies, confessions, even marriage proposals. Mira signed up one rainy afternoon, typed her first piece, and sold it for fifteen dollars. That night, they had warm soup and leftover bread. It felt like a miracle.

At first, it was simple.

People sent requests:

“Write a letter for my girlfriend—our two-year anniversary.”

“Make it sound poetic but not cheesy.”

“Can you help me say sorry to my mother?”

“Make him fall in love with me again.”

And Mira did. She wove magic from heartbreak, turned guilt into redemption, distance into longing, and silence into song. Every word was crafted carefully, each sentence a ribbon tied around someone else’s feelings. Her inbox grew, and so did the money.

She wrote at night, by candlelight when the power went out, scribbling on cheap notepads before transferring the words to her old, flickering laptop. She became a ghostwriter of love, a silent architect of other people’s emotions. It never occurred to her that she was giving something of herself away each time.

But she was.

It started with small things. A phrase she once wrote for her own crush in a notebook ended up in a stranger’s wedding proposal. Then a line she had whispered to herself after a dream appeared in a farewell letter commissioned by a heartbroken man. She didn't think much of it, telling herself she was just recycling old thoughts. But something deep inside began to fray.

Then came Elias.

He had ordered a simple letter—just a short love note for his fiancée. But his message to her was strange: “Don’t make it too romantic. Just honest. I think we’ve forgotten how to speak.”

Mira paused. Most clients wanted fireworks. Elias wanted truth.

She crafted a letter that felt like breathing. Gentle, real, and raw. When she sent it, he replied with:

“You reminded her who I used to be. Thank you.”

He came back. Not with more orders, but with questions.

“Do you write for yourself?”

“What does love mean to you?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

Mira never answered directly, but his emails lingered in her inbox longer than the others. He started writing just to write. Not to buy anything. Just to talk. For the first time, Mira stopped feeling like a ghost. He made her laugh with stories about his dog, about burnt toast and bad coffee. He told her he was an architect, but lately felt like all he did was build walls.

She replied in pieces. Small, cautious, careful. She didn’t tell him everything—not about her mother’s health, or the eviction notices, or the way she wrote letters for people who couldn't write their own hearts. But she did tell him about her favorite words. About how she dreamed of writing a book someday. About how sometimes she imagined a world made of paper hearts, where people could carry their feelings openly, fragile and real.

Elias said he would like to live in that world too.

Their messages became daily. Then nightly. Then something like poetry. Mira knew it was foolish, but she felt seen. She wasn’t just a vessel for other people’s emotions anymore. She was being read—not as a ghostwriter, but as a person. As Mira.

Then one day, silence.

No message. No "good morning," no "I loved your last reply." Just… nothing.

A week passed. Then two. Mira told herself it didn’t matter. He was just a client-turned-pen-pal. A fleeting connection. But the ache in her chest grew louder than the words on her screen.

She sent one last message:

“I hope everything’s okay. I’m sorry if I crossed a line.”

No reply.

So she did what she always did when life hurt—she wrote. Not for a client. Not for money. For herself.

She poured everything into a story about a girl who sold love letters for a living. Who met a man who taught her to feel again. Who disappeared just when she thought she mattered. A story not for publishing, not for selling—just to feel less alone.

But old habits die hard.

She posted it anonymously on the site, under a category for "fictional love letters." It wasn’t fiction. It was her truth folded into a metaphor. The title: Paper Hearts.

Two days later, she got a message.

From Elias.

It was short.

“I read it. I knew it was you. I’m sorry I disappeared. My fiancée left. I didn’t want to drag you into my mess.”

Then another:

“But you weren’t just someone I wrote to. You were the only one who really listened. If that story was real… if any of it was real… I’d like to start again. As myself.”

Mira stared at the screen for a long time.

Her hands hovered over the keyboard.

Then she smiled and typed:

“No more sold words. Just real ones. Let’s begin.”