there's a line of PO boxes in here, under wood of a gentle burnt finish and shaded glass. the post office is quiet and has a mural vaulted over the waiting area. the stone floor and concrete walls echo much as voices have for generations in this relic of the works progress administration.

if you go around the corner, the PO boxes are there, silent. sometimes someone opens one, with a ieerteriaouu of the key turning, then a coffle-skruchsich-wffftafft as they pull out papers, a bok! and dik-deng as the door shuts and latches. imagine having to sort all of this mail. finding each letter by name, box number, or both, and sliding it in. worrying if there's too much mail packed in there for them to get the letters out the other side. sometimes getting tired, misfiling one, and then remembering it hours later just as sleep is encroaching upon the bed-filed human. it's amazing it ever gets done.

the mail is one way we know one another. write some symbols on an envelope, put some scratches which another human can decipher as meaning something inside, spend your $0.37 (15.27% of the minimum hourly wage) to fire it across the country, including to outlying possessions like puerto rico. it can't be so bad.

there are people behind these PO boxes, people i remember. some are dead, some simply have moved on. others are like me, lonely travelers in the night, collecting moments that mean something at the time and then moving onward, into the unknown, grateful for an undefined tapestry upon which to briefly exist before meaning vanishes with the passage of time.