“The Weight of an Unopened Letter”
by Reece Scobie HMP Addiewell
It arrives with the shadow of the mornings first bell,
A thin, white rectangle sliding through the door of my cell.
It hits the lino with a sound like a falling leaf,
A paper-thin vessel for a mountain of grief,
Or a reservoir of hope, or a flicker of light,
The only thing breathing in the middle of the night.
I don’t pick it up, I let it lie on the floor,
A boundary marker between “Us” and the “Before”.
In here, we are measured by the ticking of the clock,
By the clatter of the trolley and the turning of the lock.
But that envelope holds a different kind of time.
The scent of a kitchen, the rhythm of a rhyme,
The way the rain sounded on a window in June,
The hum of a mother whistling a half-forgotten tune.
How can four ounces of paper feel heavy as lead?
Containing the words that were better left unsaid,
Or the “I miss yous” that puncture the amour of the wing,
The sharp, sudden ache that the outside can bring.
To open it is to invite the world through the bars,
Two remember the distance between us and the stars.
It’s a fragile connection, a bridge made of ink,
Pushing a man to the very edge of the brink.
I trace the handwriting, the loops, and the lines,
Looking for the “Truth” between the vertical signs.
Is it a “Goodbye” hidden in a “Hello”?
A story of a life that I no longer know.
In the silence of the bang-up, the letter starts to grow,
Until the walls of this box are just part of the show.
Because as long as that letter remains sealed and tight,
I can imagine a world where everything is right.
But the seal must be broken, the ink must be read,
To feed the ghost of the man who isn’t yet dead.
So, I reach for the floor, and I lift up the weight,
And I step through the paper…and I walk through the gate.