Letter Three: A Name Carved in Driftwood

From Iris — never sent

Dear __,

I found it today while walking the northern bend—
a piece of driftwood wedged between stones, worn soft by salt and time.
Someone had carved a name into it.

“Silas.”

Just that.
No date. No message. Just a single name that caught the light in a way that made me stop.

I traced it with my thumb.
The letters were shallow but certain, like someone had known exactly what they wanted to say.
I thought about bringing it home.
But it felt like it belonged to the shore.
So I placed it back gently and walked on.

Funny, isn’t it?
How we want to leave proof that we were here.
Not a monument.
Just a name in wood. A whisper in the rocks.
Something that says: I loved something enough to mark it.

When I got back to the cottage, I looked through the bookshelf again.
Miriam kept all the same titles I remember—cookbooks, nature guides, and the poetry of people who knew how to write about rain.
But one spine had slipped behind the others: Letters to No One in Particular.
Inside, every page was blank.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing here.
Writing letters to no one in particular.
Or maybe… to someone I haven’t met yet.

I wonder if Silas is still alive.
Or if the sea remembers him, even if no one else does.

—I.