Username+ID#: Rabbit + 623629
Name: Suzuki
Prompt:
"I know it doesn't look like much.
My garden doesn't grow flowers -- not real ones anyways.
The room that I call my "garden" sits at the back of my house. It doesn't get a lot of sunlight, but it's okay. It doesn't need to. The plants that sit neatly on the shelves and hang from the ceiling are all fake. They will never wilt, no matter how long I forget to dust them or rearrange them. They're not there to be real, just to set the mood. A quiet green, calm, still feeling. It feels peaceful in here.
The heart of this room isn't the plants -- it's the letters.
Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, collected over the years. Some are pinned carefully to the walls like paintings in a gallery. Others are tucked into thin frames or displayed in a glass case. I take care of them all. I make sure the paper doesn't yellow or crinkle at the edges, that the ink doesn't smudge or fade away with time. Every so often, I would sit and gently brush the dust from the corners or redo the display, with the same care that one might delicately prune or repot a beloved plant.
Some of the letters are mine, but many are not. Some were addressed to no one -- just thoughts scribbled hastily on paper with no sender, no destination. Others were meant for someone, but never made it. A few are the ones I've written but never sent intentionally. Most came to me through my work -- a post office.
In this small town, letters can get lost. No return address, no name, no one to claim it. Some of them have been in circulation for years -- letters slipped between machines, dropped behind shelves, forgotten in old bins. I try to trace them back, of course. I try to find where they belong, where their home really is. But sometimes, there's no where left to send them.
So I keep them -- not out of being nosy, just to give them a home. I don't always open them. In fact, many I never do. But there's something about holding a piece of someone's heart, their words captured on paper, that feels important. Even if the person is gone, their thoughts remain. Their fears, their hopes, their little fragments of life that they wanted to express -- they deserve a place to rest. It would feel too disrespectful to simply toss them in the trash.
People started sending them to me, eventually. Letters they didn't want to send, or couldn't. Anonymous stories. Confessions. Pieces of life too heavy to carry alone. I read those -- sitting here in the quiet green of my garden. I remember them.
This may not be a place of blooming flowers, fresh soil, or a sweet fragrance; but it's a place where something grows, I think. Maybe a memory, maybe kindness, or a record of what people hold dear to them quietly.
Maybe it's not much, but it's mine."
[500]
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