In letters posted home I shared gray Paris awakening from war, myself too, present in every word.

Returning home, I found my letters gone.

“You never said to keep them.” My father shifted uneasily in his chair.

“No, you never did,” said my step-mother, belligerent.

I mourned my lost words.

Catherine Mathews is a US State Department retiree, formerly stationed overseas in Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Athens, Frankfurt, and Istanbul, and now living in northern Virginia and writing about it.