One Million Tiny Things

Planet friends

Dear Mercury,
Hi.
How long are we going to keep doing this? Just leaving letters in the abandoned house's mailbox? I don't even know who you are. Okay, that goes both ways, because you don't know me either, do you?

Do you think we've passed each other on the street? Do you think you know me in real life? I know, I know, this is real life but for me these letters are the closest it'll get to a fantasy. You could be some hopeless tramp, I probably won't care because you'll still be my best friend. Won't you? Even if we eventually figure out who each other is.

It's weird, isn't it? I find a letter in an old mailbox and decide to reply to it because I have nothing else to do. Bam! New best friend who's as into astrology as I am.

I love the fact that you left letters to your future self there. It was so original. But more than that, it showed me that others were also struggling to figure out their future. It wasn't just me with no idea of what to do with my life. You were there too and it comforted me.
So thanks, Mercury, for being there for me without even knowing it.

You asked me in your last letter why I replied to your letters all those months ago. Truth is, I don't really know. Like I said, they spoke out to me. I'm curious, sue me. When I found the letters, of course I snooped. And instead of being a joke or a laugh, they were heartbreaking letters of someone lost in their own life.
I guess I wanted to tell you that it would all work out. I've always been the optimist to your pessimist that's why we became such fast friends. I'm Salt, your pepper, one's black and one's white but you never add one without the other. I didn't know what I'd do later I life either but I wanted to comfort you. Remember I told you that I'd read somewhere that it would all be okay in the end, if it wasn't okay, then it wasn't the end. I live by that and I guess I wanted to tell you that too.

And then there was the fact that you referred to yourself as Mercury in your letters. I'd always found astrology fascinating and all the terms and puns you dropped in your letter, convinced me that you were too. And withl our differences in heart, I became Neptune. You were hot (pun intended) and I was cool (still punning). You were small, I was big. Neptune was opposite as I could make us.

Ooooh yeah,
Did you look at the night sky last Thursday? Mercury was present there among the stars. A shining red light that reminded me of you. I wish Neptune was there too but it wasn't.

Speaking of the sky, does it ever scare you? The great world beyond what we know? Do you ever look up and comprehend that those twinkling blobs of white are burning balls of fire a million miles away. All of it, the dark sky, the stars, the sun, the moon, it's all out there in a world we've never truly seen or understood. It scares me sometimes.

Awaiting your reply,
Neptune