January. I remember the end of that month, of that year, as if it was now.

There was snow, yes. And it was cold. And I was in school. But that’s all trivial.

You see, the end of January was when the letters stopped.

They’d been coming like clockwork, every week, Wednesday, for three years.

I look back now and realize that I’d never responded to those letters. Me, preferring the telephone rather than the pen.

But those letters, something personal for me, just for me.

That was what was torn away. Torn, like a sheet of notebook paper ripped out when you finished, yes, a letter.

January.

I shall never forget.

But then, the story goes back much further.

Letters.

I discovered them in a box. Letters from long ago, I read them and thought.

There was a long history there.

Hopes of the past present and the future.

My future?

But, I digress.

January. The day, no the month, the end. Oh the letters.

You never know, do you, when something so small, so regular, can end in one split moments. The love, the feeling. Bound out upon lined pages. Stories, albeit short, about the weather, gossip, worries.

And I never answered. Every day since I have felt empty. One never does know.

I should have written. I should have. Now I’ll never get a chance! No! I’ll start now: