The Weight of the Letter

A letter can love you. Or destroy you. This one tried both.

Artwork by : Shain Parwiz

The air here used to taste like possibility,

like cut grass, like her laughter threading through it.

Our spot.

I called it the perfect sniper spot.

At the time, I meant that we were safe,

that we could see everything from our vantage point.

Little did I know I was the one in the crosshairs.

Just an old rain tree, hunched over,

the grey smear of East Coast Park,

the sea a dull, broken line beyond.

Its canopy felt older than us both,

older, wiser, watching.

I can’t walk near it now.

Can’t even look.

It’s a perimeter wrapped in barbed wire,

an unseen crime scene

strung tight around the memory.

⸻

The paper felt too thin,

as if it might tear beneath the weight of words.

Her handwriting, familiar,

but the letters shaped strange, alien, hard.

“So much love to give,” she wrote.

A line landing like a slap.

Like being handed a full cup

with the cruel command: you can never drink.

⸻

Then the hook. The real wound:

“But too many demons.”

Demons.

A jagged stone thrown straight into soft skin.

Not just flaws.

Not mere problems.

Demons.

Something monstrous living inside me.

Something poison-stained,

rotting the love,

making it unfit,

canceling it out.

⸻

The paper shook in my hand,

blurred into nothing.

Around the bench,

the grey park, the bruised sky,

the dull roar of the sea,

all flattened.

Colorless.

A stage set for this one sharp, tearing fact.

⸻

Three hours. The walk home.

Each step a lead weight,

dragging me into concrete.

The city blurred past,

hard faces, jagged buildings,

pressing in, indifferent.

The sky, a bruise.

Heavy. Unmoving.

⸻

And then the tears came.

Not gentle.

Hot. Stinging. Ugly.

Salt and failure streaking my skin.

Chest bound tight like rope.

Breath scraping against itself.

⸻

Then rain.

Hard. Cold.

Sheets hammering down

like it hated me.

Soaked through clothes, skin, soul,

like it was trying to scrub those words off me.

It couldn’t.

They were etched in bone.

⸻

Demons.

The rain was just more proof.

More weight.

More cold.

More truth.

⸻

Back home, the house was too quiet.

Too empty.

Her absence carved a scream

that filled the rooms.

⸻

The letter, a crumpled mess in my pocket.

Damp.

But the words burned hotter.

Demons.

⸻

That’s when it started.

The thirst.

Not for water. Not for life.

But for anything thick enough

to dull the edges,

to blur the razor-sharp memory

of that rain tree,

that park bench,

that letter.

⸻

That’s when the drinking stopped

being sometimes.

It became the only thing.

Not for fun.

Not for forgetting.

For function.

To coat the word demons

in something thick enough to survive.

⸻

Years now.

Numbness like a second skin.

The thought of anyone close enough

to see under it?

Fucking Horrifying.

⸻

What if they found the same thing?

What if they handed me another letter?

What if they used the same word?

Demons.

⸻

Author’s Note:

This one’s different.
This one nearly didn’t get shared.
It’s the closest I’ve come to not writing at all.

The Weight of the Letter isn’t just another piece in Rust and Silence.
It’s the one that cracked me open in ways I’m still trying to name.
There’s no metaphor here.

Just memory.

It’s about a sentence I’ll never forget.
About a version of love that gave me a full cup
and told me I wasn’t worthy to drink it.

And maybe the most brutal part of it all?
She’s still listed as my emergency contact.
I never changed it. Part of me didn’t know how.

Thank you, for reading this far,
and for being the kind of people who don’t look away from what’s real.

-Shain