THE TICKING of the wall clock echoed through the four corners of your room, each second dragging into the next. with your head resting on the cool surface of your desk, a tired sigh slipped past your lips. you’d finally finished your homework for the night, leaving you with nothing else to occupy your restless mind.
straightening up, your eyes drifted toward the corner of your desk, where a small pile of pastel-colored envelopes sat neatly stacked. they had become a routine sight—letters you’d been finding in your locker every day without fail.
each one was signed the same way.
-r
no full name, no hint of who the sender could be. just that single initial. you’d told yourself countless times that it didn’t matter, that they were probably nothing more than a fleeting gesture. but it would be a lie to say the letters hadn’t piqued your interest.
your hand reached for a random envelope from the pile, fingers brushing against the soft pastel surface. slipping it open with practiced ease, you pulled out the neatly folded paper inside. the page was slightly crumpled at the edges, as if it had been folded and unfolded several times before finding its way into your hands. still, it was clean and well-kept.
unfolding it, you were met with a poem. or at least, an attempt at one. the sentiment was there—sweet and genuine—but the execution left much to be desired.
the page bore evidence of your intervention—red lines marking the errors, arrows pointing to restructured sentences, and small notes jotted in the margins as corrections.
whoever had written this letter to you had either failed english spectacularly at some point or hadn’t cared enough to pay attention in class.
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'who even writes 'beautifuller'? that's not even a word,' you thought to yourself, your inner critique as sharp as ever.
despite the absurdity of it all, your expression remained unchanged, the same blank look that rarely betrayed your thoughts. yet, if someone looked closely, they might have caught the faint glimmer of amusement in your eyes as you scanned the poem once more.
the corrections you had made were glaring, the red lines and annotations stark against the paper. it looked less like a love letter and more like an english assignment graded by a particularly strict teacher.
still, you couldn’t bring yourself to toss it away. something about the clumsy, earnest effort behind the words tugged at you, as if the imperfections themselves held a charm you couldn’t quite define.
