Stamp

When I was small, I collected stamps. Every day after school, I would ask my mother if any letters had arrived. She would hand me the empty envelopes, and I’d carefully peel the stamps off to glue into my little notebook. It was my greatest joy and one of the few things I carried into adulthood.

Recently, in a moment where I was desperate to reach across an impossible silence, something in me made me carry an old notebook across the world. I didn’t know what awaited me on the other side. I just opened it and gave away my stamps.

In giving them away, I understood what they meant. They were proof of a time when I ran toward what I loved without hesitation. A doorway back to the boy I was.

And the door through which he reaches out to take your hand and bring you home along his trail.

Every year, a few of the remaining stamps will be released. This year, five are given, one for each passage home. When the last one is gone, the door to this world will close.