Justin Jones – Boots of Spanish Leather (zshare)

I decided I might as well write this here, since I don’t know if you check your email address anymore, or if you even remember your own password. And anyway, in light of everything, this space seems fitting.

Thank you.

I picked it up at the post office and it was wrapped in official Canada Post shrinkwrap and that was enough to make me smile, the self-importance of all that government-approved wrapping. That box could have been empty and I’d have been happy enough for the postage. Anyway, I was on my way to school, or I was on my way to some randomly chosen street, or I was going to the beach, or I was about to see someone for lunch, or any one of a number of or’s – the point is that I was going somewhere that morning and so, after signing the necessary forms, I put the package in my bag without opening it. I waited for the bus and I got on the bus and I took my favourite seat at the very back of the bus, where the seats are just high enough that my toes don’t quite touch the ground. That was also the day I got an anonymous postcard in the mail – through the mailslot, no pickup required – and so I pulled that out of my bag first and read that first, carefully, all three handwritten lines.

I waited for one stop to pass, and then the next, and then I took it out of my bag. There was the shrinkwrap to go through, then the ribbon to untie, then your choice in font to identify and consider, then the box to untape, and then — and I was expecting a book, or maybe fudge — I pulled it out and said oh my god and startled the girl next to me, and then I put it back in its box and I didn’t open it again for at least another week.

It still scares me, a little. You may have seen me without it, in which case I hope you weren’t offended. I was working my way up to it, but in all honesty, a part of me just wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall, but that would be strange, I think. Also, I was waiting for the right moment. That moment took three and a half months in coming.

I have trouble accepting gifts, especially of this magnitude, especially when I have no way of returning the gesture. It’s … educational, not having a choice in the matter.

Thank you
& take care,
-f.

PS: It’s just as well that my building has only 18 floors, else I’d have never gotten it.