Mystery Slot

 

 

The Woodbridge Post Office Lady .

I push it through.  A passing without meeting.  An intimate exchange.  Will she sniff where I’ve been?  Add another layer of touch?  A crease in the handling?  Hold its journey up for how long?

A tantalising story with its imaginary end.  Somewhere beyond the slot.   And to know would spoil this hush exchange.  The chance to build towards another.  And another.  Until the next.

Or maybe it just fell unnoticed into a bag?  My story tells me more.

 

Footnote:  Wrote this piece on holiday in Tasmania because I was posting postcards back home, and the friend I was staying with talked about this “Woodbridge post office lady” he’d come to know through his daily visits to collect and post mail.

These postcards I slipped into the slot carried very personal messages to loved ones and I wondered how many people secretly read the cards along their journey.  Like the woman who worked in the post office or the postie delivering the mail back home.  I was tempted to go inside the post office and put a face to this woman of Woodbridge, see who or what caught the cards beyond the slot, but I restrained myself.  I wanted to preserve the mystery.  And I think mystery is getting harder to experience, (and a sense of connectedness) particularly since the invention of Google and the global hunger and obsession for celebrity news and gossip.

Find in Clunk & Jam book.