A Letter Never Sent

Mein liebster Karl,

I don’t know if this letter will ever reach you. The mail service has become unreliable — another thing the war has broken. But I must write. Writing to you is the only thing that makes me feel near you.

Yesterday I saw a man on the tram who walked like you. For a moment, my heart stopped. I followed him for three blocks before I realized he was a stranger. I stood on the corner and cried, and no one looked at me. Everyone in Berlin is crying these days.

Our apartment feels hollow without you. I still set two plates on the table at dinner. The neighbors think I have lost my mind. Perhaps I have. But the alternative — accepting this reality — is worse.

The air raids are becoming more frequent. We spend hours in the shelter, and I sit in the dark and compose letters to you in my head. I tell you about the sparrow that nests outside our window, about the way the light falls across our bed in the afternoon. I try to fill my letters with ordinary things, as if by writing about normal life I can somehow preserve it.

I have hidden this letter in a hole in the wall behind your grandmother’s portrait. In case — in case something happens to me — I want you to find it when you come home. Come home, Karl. Whatever you do, come home.

Your Hannah