Page 6 of Soul to Possess

Genevieve,

I read your letter with a hand on my jaw, like pressing hard enough might keep something from slipping loose in me. You wrote about dancing in bare feet and eating cake with your fingers, and I swear I could see it—your shoulders unburdened, your mouth soft with sugar, joy leaking out of you in quiet defiance. I’d watch that. I’d memorize it. And if I was brave enough, I’d join you. Not well, not gracefully. But I’d try. Just to keep you spinning.

You asked about regret. There’s a girl I loved once—years ago. I loved her in the way boys sometimes love—like gripping a thing too tightly and then watching it die anyway. She wanted to run and I let her, told myself it was kindness. That she needed space. What she needed was someone who wouldn’t give up. And I did. I watched her walk away and I didn’t follow. I don’t even remember what I said—but I remember everything I didn’t.

That’s the worst thing. The not-saying. The silence I stitched around someone who needed words. You asked what makes me stay. It’s this strange thing: the land here is mostlymud and fences and frostbite, but it holds me. The horses, the quiet, the morning light over the barn roof—I think I belong to it more than it belongs to me. And now, these letters. You. Somehow that keeps me from disappearing.

I stay for the sound of hooves in the cold, for the promise of something tender growing wild in a hard place. For the thought that maybe someone, somewhere, still knows how I take my coffee.

Tell me what makes you angry.

Tell me the softest thing anyone’s ever done for you.

—M

Marvin,

It’s been two months. Sixty-something days. Maybe more. I’ve lost count, but not in the absentminded way—more like the way you lose count of heartbeats. You just trust they’re still happening, even if you’re not measuring them anymore.

Your letters feel like they arrive through some sacred, secret channel. Like the universe still knows how to deliver something right to the hollowest parts of me. I don’t even wait to get inside anymore. I open them right there by the mailbox, paper trembling like skin in the cold, trying to drink in every word before it vanishes.

You asked what makes me angry. I used to say nothing. I thought being angry made me look bitter, or small, or—God forbid—ungrateful. But I am angry, Marvin. I’m angry at the way people disappear while you’re still looking at them. At the way love becomes currency. At how loneliness makes you question your worth, like the absence of company means you’re unlovable. I’m angry at how long I stayed quiet about the things that hurt me because I thought naming them would make them worse. Turns out silence is what does the real damage.

You asked about softness. When my mother died, I stopped eating for a while. Not on purpose. Just... forgot how. Grief turned food to dust in my mouth. There was this boy—barely a friend—who showed up with a thermos full of homemade soup. I told him I wasn’t hungry. He didn’t argue. Just sat on the porch next to me and drank his share while mine sat warm between us. He didn’t push. Didn’t speak. Just stayed. And I swear, that silence healed something in me before the food ever did.

That’s what softness is. Not noise. Not grand gestures. Just someone staying, even when you’ve got nothing to offer but your broken parts.

You say the land holds you. I think these letters are starting to hold me. But sometimes I wonder—what would it feel like to be held by the person writing them? Tell me what you imagine when you think of me there. On your land. In your space. What it would feel like. What you’d do if I showed up tomorrow.

—G

Genevieve,

I read your letter sitting on the barn steps, boots untied, a horse chewing hay beside me like the world wasn’t quietly shifting under my feet. Sixty-something days. That sounds both too many and not nearly enough. You asked what I imagine when I think of you here.

At first, I tried to be practical about it—wondered if you'd hate the smell of manure in the mornings or if you'd mind how the wind never seems to stop blowing out here, like the sky’s always exhaling something it doesn’t want. But then I gave up trying to be reasonable. That’s not where you live for me. You live in the unreasonable places. The heart-deep places.

I imagine you walking down the path behind the barn, bare feet in the dew-damp grass, coffee in your hand, your hair still sleep-warm. I imagine your laugh echoing off the fence rails, your shadow tangled up with mine at sunset. I imagine finding you in the kitchen—not doing anything in particular, just being—and realizing how easily the house could start to feel like a home again.

I imagine you in my truck, legs on the dash, some dusty old song on the radio that we both pretend not to love. And if you showed up tomorrow? I’d meet you at the edge of the drive, heart in my throat. I wouldn’t try to impress you. Wouldn’t tidy up the mess or hide the worn parts. I’d just stand there, sunburned and stupidly hopeful, and say, “You’re here,” like it was the most important sentence I’ve ever spoken.

You said the letters are starting to hold you. Gennie... maybe they’re meant to carry you somewhere. Not yet. I’m not asking. But I’m starting to wonder what it would feel like to stop wondering. Tell me what scares you about coming here. Tell me what part of yourself you’re most afraid I’ll see.

—M

Marvin,

I sat with your letter in my lap for a long time before I opened it. Not because I didn’t want to read it. I did, but because something about the way your name is written in that sharp, steady way makes my hands shake a little. Like my body already knows your words are going to wreck me before my brain catches up. You asked what scares me about coming there.

It’s not the horses. Or the wind. Or even the silence, though I imagine it settles over the house like a second skin. I think what scares me is what happens if I like it. If I start to belong there, in ways I’ve never quite belonged anywhere. Andthen what? What if it’s not just a place I visit, but one I miss when I leave? What if I don’t want to leave at all?

What if I see you and you’re everything I’ve built up in my head—and worse, what if you’re not? What if I’m not? I’ve spent years learning how to live in the in-between places. Half-loved. Half-healed. Half-hoping. And writing to you has started to unteach all of that. You don’t feel like a halfway thing. You feel like a leap. You asked what I’m afraid you’ll see in me.

The need. The parts I’ve kept hidden under charm and competence and too-loud laughter. The girl who still hasn’t forgiven herself for the ways she fell apart. The one who sometimes stares at her own reflection like she’s looking at a ghost she’s still trying to make peace with. You might see that and turn away. Or worse—you might stay.

And I don’t know which terrifies me more.

But I keep writing you back. That must mean something. Tell me the first thing you’d say to me if I was standing in your kitchen tomorrow morning. Tell me what you think I’d leave behind if I came and didn’t go.

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