Spring Will Stay

To the one who receives this spring,

This letter comes from some spring after 1994. The street has buses and small shops, and counters pressed under glass. The envelope is deep blue, practical paper. Its English title is set in brush script. Papercut plum blossoms in cream and soft pink are layered into the paper surface, as if they had grown out of it. A sage-green ledger strip and a tiny scissors emblem complete it.

Long ago someone met a courier on the road, broke off a branch of plum blossom, and asked him to carry it to a friend far away: "Meeting a courier on the road, I broke off a plum branch to send to you in the far northwest. The south has nothing more to give, so I send a single branch of spring." — Lu Kai, "To Fan Ye" (Southern and Northern dynasties)

A post office is much the same: we have nothing else, only a branch of spring to send. Spring does not stay for ever, but a letter keeps it for us. Welcome; read slowly, receive slowly, answer slowly.

Spring sends its regards

Storm Post Office

After 1994 · One spring