Envelope No. 7

By Audrey Kim

They wrote me on a piece of thin government paper.   My corners are sharp, my words cut deeper. 

I was not written in loving script, but in rigid type, ink pressed by a military typewriter– each letter punched into me without hesitation. 

I was sealed with care, being folded up three times along precise creases. The men said I was necessary. I could hear in their tones– steady voices that did not speak of sorrow. 

The kettle hisses faintly on the ratione gas stove as you go about your day. Then, the letter arrives. A War Department envelope– stamped in black ink, bearing the eagle seal. You think it’s your son writing to you– he’s written before. And you’ve read every single one. But this time is different. Breathing feels like a struggle. The envelope seems to weigh more– something in your chest tightens, even before you break the seal. 

The paper seems to tremble as you touch it– or is it just your hands? 

“We regret to inform you…” 

You never get past that line. 

You set it down, put the rest back in the envelope and close it up. I am quiet when you do not open me. Only unfolded, will I speak.  

“Who are you to tell me where he is?” you whisper. 

I do not answer. I simply stare. 

You don’t pick me up after that. You clean his room once more, preparing for when he’ll come back. You make his favorite food, and eat it for dinner as if he is sitting across from you, chair still pulled out. 

You glance at the door again. Any moment now, he should walk in, smiling that bright grin he gave you before he left. 

The neighbors come– Mrs. Hillsworth, who only has daughters. She gives you a casserole, asks you about your son. 

You tell her that he’ll come home for Christmas. 

He won’t be coming home for Christmas. 

Not for New Year’s. 

Not for his birthday. 

I sit untouched on the kitchen counter. The sunlight moves across me, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Dust settles on my corners. 

Sometimes, you glance at me. Sometimes, you don’t. Sometimes, you like to pretend I don’t exist at all. Sometimes, you almost succeed. 

I didn’t want to say those words– those words, we regret to inform you. My pleas for being written differently were not heeded. I would rather be a love letter, or a letter from him, signed in his messy handwriting, corners smudged with dirt from the field or a stain from a cup of tea. 

But I am not him. I am merely a thing that took his place. 

You’re cleaning the house again. Mopping, dusting, arranging his shoes. You go to his room, and clean it– you arrange his things in the way that he always liked them. Maybe if you clean enough, he’ll come back and tell you that he loves you, one more time. 

Just once more. 

And yet, he will not come back. Not now, not ever. Not for Christmas, not for Thanksgiving. 

I see the way you pause in his doorway sometimes. But you don’t step inside. You don’t touch any of his items, the posters of aircraft squadrons and war bond ads still clinging to the wall. You stand there with your hand on the doorway, like the air turned to glass and by stepping through the threshold, you’d be the one to shatter. 

You remember the day he learned to walk, the way he wobbled towards you on shaky legs with a big smile on his face. That smile never vanished– even when his name was called and the little slip of paper came. 

He smiled and told you he’d come home with a Purple Heart, told you he’d always be fine. 

But now the room’s still, and it feels wrong to breathe. 
I lie on the counter and watch as the dust collects around me. I watch the light crawl across my surface, and I feel it too– it’s warm, but it shouldn’t be. If I could fold myself back into the envelope and disappear, I would. If I could rewrite myself into something gentler, I would– but I do not get a second chance. 

I wish the ink had choked in my throat before I ever reached your hands.

Yet I did not get a chance to choose the words I carry. 

Days slip into weeks, the wireless murmuring every night.  And soon enough, the weeks slip into months. The kettle still hisses every morning, though half the time you forget to pour the water, leaving it boiling until eventually it’s nothing but steam that slips through your fingers. You forget to finish meals, but you also forget to start them. 

The men come with a box in their hands. Six men in pressed uniforms stand at the door, caps tucked beneath their arms. You didn’t cry at first. You didn’t even open it, just gave a nod to those men and stood there, hand over your mouth, looking at the lid as though if you blinked, it would disappear. 

That night, you pick me up again. Your hands tremble, but not in the way they did when you first got me. It’s the kind that comes from sinking, sinking, sinking– slow, inevitable. 

You unfold me carefully. Tenderly– gently, as if this time, the words might show mercy. 

“We regret to inform you.” 

You whisper his name. Not to me– never to me– but to the empty air that should’ve answered, should’ve been filled with the sound of his laugh. You say his name to the echo of footsteps that once crossed this house. Even that is better than the silence. 

Your tears fall onto my surface, and I can feel them blooming into dark circles and blurring. 

A part of me thinks this is the closest I will ever come to forgiveness: being ruined by the grief I delivered.

Ink was meant to stay still. I was made to stay still. 

But your tears, your sorrow moves through me like you’re trying to pull him back to wherever he is. 

When you finally fold me again, your fingers linger on the crease, smoothing it gently—like you’re brushing dust from his shoulders, like you’re fixing the collar of his uniform one last time before he walks out the door with a wave, saying he’ll come back. 

Then, you set me beside his photograph that was taken when the world was much less cruel. You align my corners with his frame, as if I were meant to be part of him, as if grief and memory must live side by side, whether you want them to or not.

I lie there– forever beside the boy whose absence I carry within me. 

I think that this is what it means to be unbearable. 

Not the words I hold. 

Not the truth I tell. 

But in the way your hand trembles each time you touch me, learning, slowly, painfully, to exist in his absence.

Sunlight continues to shift across me– and the next time your hands brush my corners, you linger just a second longer than before. 

Audrey Kim is a student in Connecticut, and an aspiring writer. She currently is working on editing her first fully completed manuscript, and is a recipient of the CT National History Day regional award.