Remnants

She kept the letter under her pillow. She had kept it there for years, since she was eight years old, since she was old enough to tell that something was wrong. She watched her parents fight and hiss and hurt each other's hearts, then she watched it all be OK. But still she wrote this letter. To let them know what it was doing, what it did to her. To see and hear and feel these things. How it gnawed and numbed her in equal measure. And it was years before she didn't see herself as collateral damage, before she made it past this unfeeling thing she was.

She looked at the letter from time to time, when things got bad, even when things were good. The scratch of a child, the margins, the choice of word. The drawing of a stick figure, a girl, a bow in her hair, a frown on her face, a tear on her cheek. She had grand ideas of what the letter might do, what it would do. It would heal past, present, and future. It would give her a baby brother or sister. It would be picnics and Disneyland and a puppy. She was so sure of it! Why could she never bring herself to give it to them?

The three of them faded away from each other in their respective time zones. The letter yellowed and left remnants each time she read it. She read it less and less now, so she could preserve the thing, so she could remember that once, one day, years and years ago, somebody had at least tried to do something. Even if that something was small, and unfinished, and ultimately nothing.