Handwritten letter hiding youth

Lan Anh |

In 8th grade, when there was no phone, my first love began with handwritten letters folded neatly, secretly passing through the desk drawer between morning and afternoon classes.

The letters kept following each other through each study day. The content was also simple, just circling around asking if today's class was fun, how many exam scores, or where to go on the weekend. There were days when I didn't know what to write, I still tried to scribble a few random lines just to receive reply letters from that person. Just a few simple lines like that, but I could keep them like treasures, and then take advantage of the time when no one paid attention to them to read them over and over again countless times.

Every afternoon after school, I secretly leave a letter in the desk drawer and leave with small worries in my head: I don't know if when I open it, that person will smile, and will miss me as much as I miss that person. Then the next morning, as soon as I entered the classroom, the first thing I did was hurriedly touch the desk drawer.

There's mail!

Just those two words echoing in his head were enough to make his thirteen or fourteen-year-old son happy all day long. Happiness that day was strangely simple, no need for gifts or vows, just a piece of paper obediently lying in the desk drawer was complete.

Then the years quietly passed, I went to a new class, that person also grew up. Letters also became sparse and disappeared completely. We didn't have a proper breakup, no one liked it anymore, and no one blamed anyone. It's just that one day, the desk was still there but was empty. "First Love" ended peacefully, without noise, without tears, quietly disappearing between school breaks going in the opposite direction.

Looking back many years later, I wonder if there were phones or social networks back then, would things be different? But perhaps, it is the lack of technology that creates the pure beauty of memories that I can never forget.

That first love does not have a complete ending, but it leaves behind something that later feelings can hardly find again: that is the feeling of anxiously waiting for a letter, the simple joy when seeing a familiar ink streak, and a heart that is still very young, not yet defining love... but already knows how to flutter and earnestly miss someone.

Lan Anh
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