The deception is simple enough. Fact of life: letters go astray daily. Don't you cringe a bit when you drop something in the mail slot? Just like waiting for your luggage when you get off the plane--what if my bags don't make it? Instead--what if my bill doesn't get paid on time?

I'm not that cruel; I never take bills. Numbers aren't my thing. No, I hold out for personal mail, and I'm not talking cutesy greeting cards, either. I'm talking handwritten missives on heavy paper, real classy. I appreciate good penmanship.

For years people checked eggs by candlelight. I use halogens--candles are a little dicey around paper. By lamplight I cull credit card offers and bank statements, magazine subscriptions and donation requests. In lean times I'll save pen pal notes or letters from camp. What I'm really looking for is the elegant tracery of handwriting, like delicate veins beneath papery skin.

Incoming, outgoing, both take a slight detour after hours. Perhaps for a day, but never more.

Almost never.

Steaming is for stamps. I open letters as if they're addressed to me. Back at my apartment, after work, I am Dear and Dearly Beloved. I am blessed, thanked, and cajoled. I am threatened, wooed, and forgiven. I am friend, uncle, and daughter. I am recovering from surgery, giving birth, and fleeing to college.

The love letter, I'm happy to report, is far from a dead art.

"A drink of hemlock, hempen rope,
A blade corroded black,
Bright oleander gives me hope--
I'm never coming back."

Photocopies of my favorites I keep in an album. Can't copy the weight or the scent of the paper, but it lingers in the words. Originals are slapped back in their envelopes with official USPS notices. "Mail damaged in transit" or "Improperly packaged" are my standbys.

From time to time a letter leaves me feeling sour. These I stamp red with "Insufficient postage" or "Address unknown" and return. The addressees are better off without them.

Most letters are dime store novels: weak plot, shoddy execution, and a predictable ending. "Sincerely", "cordially", and "yours respectfully"; "in hope", "in trust", "in faith", or any way you want me. Or "Love", "A thousand kisses", "XOXOXOX". A wedding or a salute--that's how all the stories end.

You'd expect some variety, working in the city. Mail comes here from all corners, and I'm careful to select from outside my route. Not just for the diversity, but for the anonymity as well. What would it look like if only mail from my route received damage complaints?

I've got a reputation for hanging around after hours; I'm labeled as a workaholic and people leave me alone with my lamp. All the more time to search. All the more time to find.

"A graveyard is a funny place
For wedding bells to chime.
Though death once hid your darling face,
Now't joins my heart to thine."

If I had a mantelpiece, there's a letter I’d mount over it. I'd pull out all the stops--crimson matting and a gold frame, hung just so. It's the one letter I've never returned, and I don't mean to. Ever.

Authentic damaged mail collects in a corner of the sorting floor. Nobody wants to deal with it; nobody wants to be responsible. Parcels sit for days, ignored. I have plenty of time to sift through them.

The ribbons poking out the end of a crushed mailing tube were what caught my eye. They were heirloom-faded, red to rose to pink, and splotched with sealing wax. A true find.

Greedy as a treasure hunter, I took it home that night. I slit the tube with a penknife and unrolled it. Inside was a crushed roll of parchment--parchment!--with a wax seal like a red lollipop cracked in the wrapper. The imprint was monogrammed with initials: JRG.

The few lines of text inside disappointed me, at first. I'm not a poet, nor overly maudlin. Rhymes are for greeting cards. But the more times I read it, the more I understood.

The ink wasn't a sepia tint; it was blood. I tried nicking my thumb and writing from that well, to the same effect. The tube had been sent to a dead address; someone had already marked it "Return to sender", only there was no return address. I had my suspicions it didn't matter. From the content of the letter, I guessed the sender had a similar fate.

I feel no guilt over keeping it. After all, didn't I flatten out the creases? Didn't I melt the seal back together with a blow dryer? Left at the post office, it would have been discarded. Here in my album it has a place of honor.

"I send myself to you, my own,
With word as well as deed.
When earth combines our flesh and bone
I'll have all that I need."

When the collecting is slow, I despair. When you can e-mail from Tibet, Moscow, or Delphi, where are the handcrafted letters? Where is the art of the flowing "S" and the sharp "w"? Surviving on postcards is like living day to day on handfuls of popcorn. Food for pigeons, not the imagination. Living through the letters may be a cheap thrill, but at times it's what I have. It lets me step outside my life, to become part of someone else's, postage paid.

Of course, there is always one letter I could still live out. They aren't my initials stamped in the wax, but it'll do.

When times are rough, I plan to send the letter myself, some day.

But to whom will I address it?