Every morning at 6:30 a.m., Maya walked the same path down Rosewood Street to the old post office. To others, it might’ve seemed like a ritual born of routine. But for her, it was an act of faith—a silent prayer disguised as a letter. A ritual carved from love.
The postmaster, Mr. Ellis, always greeted her with a gentle smile. He never asked questions, though curiosity danced in his eyes each time she handed over an envelope with no return address, just the name: “Liam.” Week after week. Month after month. Over a year had passed since Maya had last seen him, yet she hadn’t missed a single Sunday.
Their story had begun in spring.................
Two years ago, the cherry blossoms had just started blooming when Liam moved into the old white house across from Maya’s. He was a quiet, enigmatic artist with sun-kissed skin and tired eyes that looked as though they carried a thousand sunsets. Always with a sketchbook in hand and a camera around his neck, he often sat by his window, watching the world but saying little.
Maya, a literature student finishing her master's in poetry, had noticed him the first day he arrived. She’d been sitting on her porch, reading Neruda aloud—half for herself, half in the hope someone was listening. She never expected that someone to be the stranger across the street.
For days, they exchanged no words. Just glances. Maya thought he was too distant. He thought she was too radiant.
Then one rainy morning, she left her favourite book outside and the pages soaked through. She was heartbroken. But the next day, tucked under her door, was a pencil sketch of the exact ruined page, beautifully redrawn with her handwriting replicated word for word.
No note. No explanation.
Just art.
That was how it began.
They started exchanging letters—old-fashioned, handwritten ones—even though they lived across from each other. Each night, they’d slide notes under the other’s door. Poems, doodles, deep confessions, simple joys, insecurities. They built a love story made of ink and paper, words and silences.
No selfies. No text messages. Just feelings.
He sketched her every day—sometimes without her knowing. She would write poems inspired by him—though she never admitted it.
He once wrote:
“I don’t know how to say the word ‘love’ without it sounding borrowed. But you, Maya, make it sound like home.”
She replied:
“Maybe we don’t need to say it. Some hearts speak without a voice. Yours found mine long before your lips found the courage.”
They were perfect in their imperfection. Two old souls caught in a time where everything was too fast, too loud, too fleeting.
But then came the storm—not in the skies, but in life.
Liam started looking pale, tired, breathless after even short walks. She noticed the tremble in his hands when he tried to sketch. He brushed it off, called it “artist’s fatigue.” But the truth came out one cold night when Maya found him collapsed on his porch.
Congenital heart failure. A rare, silent kind. It had been there all along, just waiting.
The hospital stays began. Treatments. Tests. Doctors with clipped tones and reluctant smiles. There was no miracle fix, only a possibility—a donor heart. A transplant. But the waitlist was long, and hope became something they learned to ration.
Then one morning, she woke up to find no letter. No sketch. No Liam.
Just a final note on her porch:
“I have something to find… and something to fight. Don’t wait for me unless your heart tells you to. I’ll write when I can—but I may not be able to. Please live. Please write. Please remember.”
He was gone.
No forwarding address. No calls. No updates.
Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. The seasons changed, but her devotion didn’t. Every Sunday, she wrote him a letter. She poured her soul into those pages—stories about her days, poems she thought he'd love, memories they made, fears she couldn't tell anyone else. She didn’t know where to send them. But somehow, they reached him.
Mr. Ellis would always take the letters and assure her: “Somewhere, he’s reading them. I just know it.”
She smiled, even when her eyes betrayed her.
Then came the second spring.
Maya had begun to lose hope. She had stopped waiting at windows, stopped checking her mailbox every hour. But she still walked to the post office each Sunday.
Until one morning, there was a letter addressed to her.
Same handwriting.
Same scent of charcoal and old pine.
It was from Liam.
“Maya,
I found what I needed. A new heart. Literally. A donor. The surgery happened weeks ago. I’m writing this from a recovery centre by the coast. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to see me like that—half-alive, tubes in every vein, unsure if I’d make it.
But your letters reached me. Mr. Ellis knew where to send them.
They kept me alive, Maya. More than the machines. More than the medication.
I read them on nights I thought I wouldn't wake up. I memorized your poems. I dreamt of your porch and the sound of your voice reading Neruda. You didn’t just wait—you stayed. And that kind of love is something I never thought I deserved.
But now, with this heart beating inside me, I want to earn it.
I’m coming home.
If you’ll still have me.”
Maya read the letter a hundred times, her tears smudging the ink. She ran to Mr. Ellis, who only smiled and said, “Told you. Some letters always find their way back.”
A week later, she stood on her porch, trembling. Then, from the same sidewalk where he once sketched her from afar, Liam appeared.
Thinner. Slower. But alive.
And in his hands, a small leather-bound sketchbook—worn but cherished.
He handed it to her.
Every page was a memory.
Her laughter, her porch, her rain-soaked book. Her letters copied in pencil. Her poems drawn into landscapes.
She flipped through it in silence, then looked at him.
His eyes were full, voice soft.
“I didn’t just get a new heart, Maya. I came back with the same love.”
She stepped forward, placing a hand over his chest.
“It’s still you,” she whispered. “Even louder now.”
Then she opened the last page of the sketchbook.
It held her final poem—the one she never sent but had written just in case he came back:
“You left in winter,
but I knew you’d return
when flowers bloomed again.
Some people fall in love once—
I fell in love with you twice—
once when you arrived,
and once when you returned.”