The Archivist Speaks

The attic writes. The Archivist speaks, For those who don't have a witness to their lives. They say, he finds you when it's your time to have one of his letters.

[theatticwrites]

the weight of gentle things

---memory as an act of love

"There are people who say I'm quiet,

Quiet in care, quiet in agony.

But I would call myself loud,

Loud in all the ways someone needs me to be."

Sunday afternoons remind me of my mother,

and her tea,

she sits down,

tired after Sunday chores

to talk about life and its mysteries,

she smiles when she remembers the boy who asked her out on the bus,

and the ones in her college campus,

she loves my dad--don't get me wrong,

but I'll bet you she didn't think

she'd end up

with the man

-who promised too little,

but gave a lot.

the cat curls up by her side,

and her plants droop under the sunlight,

this love was theirs,

and he would take her on a ride,

until life called them,

until I became.

sometimes I wonder who she'd be,

if things unfolded differently,

but her heart stayed the same.

Sunday evenings remind me of my dad,

and his tools,

always working on something my mother mentioned wanting in passing,

he sits down to tell me about the navy,

and the sea,

and how it seemed to come once before me.

he remembers the times when all he wanted to do was make history,

a boy, young and carefree,

playing carroms, living wistfully,

he said his brother kept him from drowning in all the hate,

and as fate, may have it he climbed on a train,

which led away from home,

to someone's land,

which he made his home,

away from home.

and this, he said brought his life back around.

Sunday nights are for singing with my sister,

she believes I put up stars in the sky,

but God knows I can only wonder,

why they look so brilliant in her eyes.

when my mother asked me, who I'd like to have,

i told her it had to be a little lady,

one with a smart mouth, and an attitude,

one who's going to remember where I hide my diary.

i remember kicking her once,

it was revenge- the first strike in a war I started,

because she was the new doll in their doll house,

and I thought I had lost,

but I was the one the doll followed.

we grew up in the same house,

but in different worlds,

and we'd meet in the hallway of memory,

tripping over the same few ghosts,

but finding it within ourselves to laugh anyways.

the river knows the weight of a stone,

or a flower that finds itself on its waters.

cursed is the memory of a daughter,

with love, a little heavy, but always prone,

to suffer the weight of gentle things,

all alone.

[theatticwrites]

the tide that spoke my name

“Found in a camera bag. Unsent, but not unloved.”

I asked the archivist for a letter today.

Sometimes I just want to hear from someone who remembered too much — someone whose words stayed behind.

He came back with one he’d found in a camera bag. There was sand between the pages, and the paper smelled faintly of salt, like it had been touched by the sea too many times.

“It wasn’t meant for anyone,” he said.

“But it looked lonely.”

He smiled and told me I could have it if I traded him one of my happiest-moment memories.

He always asks for those — he collects people like shells.

So I gave him the one where papa brought me a diary with a lock. It was very pink and sparkly and I was eight.

Now I’m sitting here, tracing the dried salt on the paper.

Somewhere between the folds, her voice begins to rise,

-soft at first, like the sound of waves before dawn.

_________________________________________

seasons passed, marked by photographs that aged,

but the beach didn’t change, nor my camera that waited.

the wind and the waves played a song,

and by the end of it, some wishes were long gone.

the salt in my tears, the salt in the waves —

i weighed them once; they were the same.

water is life, they say.

it heals.

but not when you’re drowning amidst laughing faces.

that’s when it feels monstrous,

heavier than tears.

not when you’re swallowed,

not when there's fear.

they say the tides call home those who are lost,

and one knew my name.

i didn’t write this to be heard, but to be found.

i will leave, carried with the wind and the waves.

---

I kept my hands on the letter and listened close.

The archivist once said that water holds memory —

and I think I can hear the distant screams of it.

A woman, painted in quiet chaos, stands on a rocky cliff above the sea.

She feels like a ghost, someone her parents forgot to name —

an unnamed witness to life.

She sways once, twice,

then surrenders herself to the water that remembers.

I hope she found whatever she lost.

The sea remembers. That’s enough.

[theatticwrites]

Sunflowers and Heartbreak💔

___dreams of flight.

you smell like heartbreak, darling.

with your heavy arms,

your dazzling smile,

and your crinkled doe-eyes.

you sweep people off their feet,

and never let them fall.

but while they're held in the air,

all they can think of is

how the ground is no longer fair.

the ground smells like comfort---

that's where the ants belong.

but not when you're standing among the flowers

not when I long to be a bee.

[theatticwrites]

quiet collisions.

Notes from a life we never lived.

have you heard your heart breaking?

I did, today.

in a whisper from the stars-

which said the man with a voice like the dawn, 

couldn't be mine.

did you ever love someone so much,

that you would want to defy fate for them?

I heard my reason to do that

in a song I heard

when the world was teaching me I had to be cruel.

a million options I could have had,

and I had to fall

for your star-studded eyes.

now the only promise I got

was a man who would love me just the same.

a calm one,

where love feels like he woke up every day and chose me.

where we throw shade at each other,

but have each other’s back at the end of the day.

i think I'd wake into a life

where every first bite of whatever he eats will be for me,

he'd bring me flowers

even when I said I don't like them.

and he wouldn't stand any disrespect toward me.

our children will see their father as their hero—

just like I see mine.

all because my mom chose well.

but in the depths of the night,

all I’d dream about would be

the boy who could’ve been.

the boy who almost was,

but the stars didn’t align.

the boy who held me in the silence of knowing,

by the window where I put up my pain

for the world to see—and laugh at.

the boy I had almost cried with in a library,

in another reality,

knowing fate can't stitch together

what our hearts pulled apart.

it would be you. always.

with your stupid jokes,

and your crybaby heart.

and all the words you didn’t say—

because you’d rather carry the pain into tomorrow than let it breathe here.

and maybe, in another life,

where were have a chance to speak all we didn't,

i would be the stranger who reaches for your hand in a crowded train station,

and the one who sits by you during a thunderstorm,

whispering,

"this feels like a song we used to sing."

in that life,

i won't be asking the stars for permission, 

nor would I write them poetry,

begging them to rearrange.

i would walk to you - intentionally,

like no distance could stop me.

because I've loved you across too many timelines

to let one unlucky one have the final say.

so, if this life writes us apart,

may the next one write us home.

and someday you'll get to ask me again,

"do you believe in fate?" -Cue a grin.

and I'd ask,

"is that your strongest line?"

and this time-

i wouldn't wake up.

[theatticwrites]

“Enter quietly. The Archivist is listening.”

hello from this side.

i am a woman — or, as my mother says (with love), a cautionary tale. a reminder to my people of what not to do, and how not to do it.

they tell me i can string together a few words and make people feel something. so if i can write about a duck diving face-first into a pond, you shouldn’t be surprised when i write about the attic i wandered into.

in the attic lives a presence — an antique, if he were an ornament. he calls himself a fallen god. i call him the archivist.

he keeps letters — some perfumed, some barely held together. some have ink washed with tears. others don’t know where to go. he handles them like hearts, a few million left in his care.

sometimes, when i visit, the attic breathes. the archivist’s only companion, a black kitten, tells me i don’t have to believe in time. and sometimes, when i look into her eyes, i almost don’t.

each time I visit, the Archivist lets me read a letter. some are gentle, some ache like they’ve been waiting too long to be touched. he never tells me who wrote them, only that every letter finds its reader eventually.

this is where you’ll find the letters.

some might even find you.

welcome to the attic. 🕯️