Margen
The first one arrived on a Thursday in March: a Baltic lighthouse under a slate sky. 'The water is colder than it looks from here.' No sender. The handwriting was mine.
Not similar handwriting: mine. The crooked tail on my g's, the habit of never quite closing my o's. Even the signature — the one I spent a whole summer practising when I was fourteen.
Since then, every Thursday: an orange desert, a city of yellow trams, a mountain hotel with an empty pool. Small sentences, from someone finally resting. 'It gets dark so late here.' 'I've learned to say thank you in another language.' I keep twenty-three of them in the photo box, held together with a rubber band.
I've compared the ink with my own pens. I've asked at the post office, where they know me by now. I've stopped showing them to anyone.
Today's card has no faraway view. It's my street. My front door, my balcony with the blind half down, the kitchen light on in the middle of the day. And on the back, three words, in my everyday hand:
'Almost there now.'