Goodbye, Rayashki

To you, waving on the platform,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. This letter is posted from a northern mining town in 1996: a practical gray-blue envelope, a nostalgic hand-lettered schoolbook-serif title, a cream linocut of classroom windows and a skyline of smokestacks, an olive canteen-ticket strip, a rust-coloured private stamp, and pencil snowflakes scattered down the margins. The country changed its name a few years ago; the chalk didn't change, and neither did the frost on the windows.

The story of a provincial town ends as the band strikes up a farewell tune: “The music is playing so gaily, so joyfully, and it seems that a little more and we shall know why we live, why we suffer … If only we knew, if only we knew!” — Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters (1901)

We do not know either. But some answers need not be known; they can simply be put into a letter. Those leaving, write down what you want to say; those staying, leave the light on. Goodbye is a word you can write many times.

The next train will come

Storm Post Office

1996 · A northern mining town