The Letters That Remain

Today the letters came,

Crinkled blue with that delicate black ledger. 

The odor wafts off the pages and billows

the smell of dirt and ammonia tablets,

the splatter of ink you so haplessly wrote.
My fingers grow heavy, vowels and consonants
pierce like shrapnel. 

More time, it’s always more time.

Crumpled first, then carefully folded, 

I lay you to rest within the closet. 

My eulogy said to the paper memorial

and pay my respects to the fossils that remain.