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Description
Her fingernails had earth underneath them when she laced them through mine, carelessly, like the gesture didn't matter. We were young, so it didn't matter. We took for it granted, but that doesn't matter either. The freckles on her nose marked the changing of the seasons. It would be warmer, and the thin blond hairs on her pale legs would glisten in the sunlight like cornsilk. I never wanted those hairs to go away. They were electric, and her legs moved mechanically and fast, like she had a special part that my brown legs weren't made with.

She took me into the woods where the creek collided with fallen trees and a big clearing. It was the place we ruled. Really she ruled, and I watched. She would pretend to be a princess, and I would pretend to be her.

That day we ate oranges in our favorite spots. The juice ran all down our arms, and we'd play a game trying to see where the oranges stopped and our skin began. I liked to imagine that the line would never exist and that we could just become parts of the things that mattered but faded.

That day was a burial day. She held an old coffee can in her hands, and I peered into it to see what creature we were putting to rest. I didn't see anything. She pulled piles of paper out of it, which I didn't understand, but I had gotten used to her, so I forced myself to be patient.

Normally the contents of these bins and boxes were animal carcasses she rescued from her yard. She felt she owed them respect, so we were there to deliver it. We spent hours sometimes crafting eulogies we felt best honored animate things, despite the fact that we'd never known them. She insisted that as humans we had to have known them. I don't think I understood that.

This box was full of paper, letters that looked like they contained every kind of handwriting.

I've been collecting them for a while now, she said, more to the things themselves than to me. So many different people wrote them. Each page smells different, feels different, full of someone's own perception of a memory meant for one specific person.

That person wasn't us, and I felt like a violator seeing these pieces of private people I didn't know. Something about them made me more nauseous than the dead birds and squirrels.

There was no dead to bury, so we buried the letters alive. The sound of the leaves of paper shuffling against each other followed by the dry click of the coffee can lid were the only words spoken.

I reached for her hand and started to cry.

Description
Her fingernails had earth underneath them when she laced them through mine, carelessly, like the gesture didn't matter. We were young, so it didn't matter. We took for it granted, but that doesn't matter either. The freckles on her nose marked the changing of the seasons. It would be warmer, and the thin blond hairs on her pale legs would glisten in the sunlight like cornsilk. I never wanted those hairs to go away. They were electric, and her legs moved mechanically and fast, like she had a special part that my brown legs weren't made with.

She took me into the woods where the creek collided with fallen trees and a big clearing. It was the place we ruled. Really she ruled, and I watched. She would pretend to be a princess, and I would pretend to be her.

That day we ate oranges in our favorite spots. The juice ran all down our arms, and we'd play a game trying to see where the oranges stopped and our skin began. I liked to imagine that the line would never exist and that we could just become parts of the things that mattered but faded.

That day was a burial day. She held an old coffee can in her hands, and I peered into it to see what creature we were putting to rest. I didn't see anything. She pulled piles of paper out of it, which I didn't understand, but I had gotten used to her, so I forced myself to be patient.

Normally the contents of these bins and boxes were animal carcasses she rescued from her yard. She felt she owed them respect, so we were there to deliver it. We spent hours sometimes crafting eulogies we felt best honored animate things, despite the fact that we'd never known them. She insisted that as humans we had to have known them. I don't think I understood that.

This box was full of paper, letters that looked like they contained every kind of handwriting.

I've been collecting them for a while now, she said, more to the things themselves than to me. So many different people wrote them. Each page smells different, feels different, full of someone's own perception of a memory meant for one specific person.

That person wasn't us, and I felt like a violator seeing these pieces of private people I didn't know. Something about them made me more nauseous than the dead birds and squirrels.

There was no dead to bury, so we buried the letters alive. The sound of the leaves of paper shuffling against each other followed by the dry click of the coffee can lid were the only words spoken.

I reached for her hand and started to cry.