Sorting my father's letters by hand, at 1am

Started as an inventory — dates, postmarks, cities he'd already left — and became something else. The way he shifted from 'Dear Junie' to just 'Junie' in the last year, as if formalities were luggage he'd finally set down. I'm not cataloguing his absence so much as learning its architecture. The kitchen hums at this hour like a held note, and the letters keep their own time.