When No One Was Looking at the Mailbox

The mailbox had been there since before she was born. Painted dark green, with its narrow, rusted slot that looked like the closed mouth of someone who had nothing left to say.

In the nineties it had been the heart of the building. Invitations to birthdays, Christmas cards, love letters, angry notes, goodbyes were left there. Also flyers, forgotten shopping lists, notices from the building management. There was something alive in that coming and going of paper.

But it had been years since anyone used it. The building’s WhatsApp group had turned it into a decorative object, a mute relic beside the intercom.

Until that day.

She was arriving home with her keys in hand when something fell. A yellowish envelope barely showed through the slit. She thought it was an old flyer. She was about to let it go—but the name, her name, written by hand, stopped her.

She pulled it out gently. It was a letter. She recognized his handwriting instantly. A letter from him.

Suddenly memories ran through her mind like movie scenes. She vividly remembered his face, the laughter, the hugs, the walks. And quickly, the crying and the goodbyes too. She felt a sharp pain in her chest. Slowly, she brought her hand to the mailbox and took the envelope.

The paper was a little damp, as if it too had cried with the passage of time. She didn’t open it right there. Something told her this letter deserved a moment alone, away from the noise of the elevator and the steps of neighbors who no longer asked about anybody.

She climbed the stairs as if she were twenty years younger and with hope in her pocket. She closed her apartment door softly, as if she didn’t want to interrupt the silence.

She sat in the kitchen, her hands trembling. She broke the edge of the envelope carefully, as if it were fragile, as if by opening it she could also unravel the past.

Dear Clara:

I’ve lost track of you since the day we said goodbye at that pizzeria in Buenos Aires.

As she read, the movie projected in her head. Luciano telling her that this pizza had nothing to envy from the one in Naples. She knew he was lying. He said it just to make her smile. A grin that tried to be a smile appeared on her face—back then and now. It was a mix of pain and joy.

It sounded almost tragicomic that a man born and raised in a city with such a strong Italian identity could even say out loud that the cuisine of another country could rival theirs. He said it to make her laugh.

Since then I’ve crossed oceans, some real and some symbolic. I can’t lie: I thought about writing to you many times. But I didn’t know if you wanted to hear from me, if you’d found what you were looking for, if you still kept some bit of us in a corner of your everyday life. I’ve returned to Argentina for work. For a month now I’ve been walking the streets and the corners where we laughed echo back your voice as you pass by. I’m writing this hoping that one of these days I’ll run into you or your mailbox.

The one where I once left a postcard with no sender, just to make you laugh.

If you found this letter, it’s because I found the mailbox. And if you are reading this, then perhaps there’s still something of the “us” we were. Not to go back, not to take anything up again. Just to know that, for a second, we still thought of each other from the same place in the world.

Ti mando un abbraccio lieve, come quelli che ci davamo quando non sapevamo come salutarci.

L.

She read it twice, as if the paper could reveal something more if she looked at it long enough. There was no phone number, no address, no explicit invitation to search for him. She could find him easily on social media, of course. But she understood that it wasn’t about that. There was something in this letter, in such an out-of-time gesture, that asked to be respected just as it was: a fleeting, analog encounter between two worlds that almost never touch, between what once was and what still leaves a mark.

Clara believed in destiny. In meaningful coincidences. Maybe, if it was meant to be, they would cross paths again. Just as he crossed paths with her mailbox. Just as she crossed paths with the letter.