They're in a shoebox, shoved to the back of a cupboard I keep locked. And before anyone gets ideas — this isn't a torch I'm carrying. I don't want him back. That relationship ended where it was supposed to and my marriage is good.
It's not really about him at all.
It's that eighteen-year-old me wrote back to those letters. My handwriting, my words, my ridiculous hopeful heart is folded up in that box right alongside his. And I can hold onto being that young somewhere. That girl who believed things so easily, who wrote sentences she'd cringe at now, who felt everything at full volume.
To throw out the letters, I'd have to throw her out too. And I'm just not able to do it. He's incidental. She's the one I'm keeping.