A postscript by the lake

THE STORY BEHIND THE SOUND

The postcard has spent a whole week in your bag. Its front shows an ordinary lake view. On the back, the greeting and a description of the weather are finished, but the last sentence is missing. You bring it to the end of a wooden pier, hoping to look at the actual water before posting it. The morning lake is still, and the trees along the bank hold long reflections.

The melody does not chase the ripples. It occasionally places a few notes above a sustained chord. Sitting on the lowest step, you support the postcard with a notebook. You intended to write a serious summary of recent life, yet the pen remains still. Far away, someone rows a small boat, and each lifted oar leaves a brief point of brightness on the surface.

You remember the intended recipient teaching you to row years ago. They kept asking you to stop looking impatiently toward the opposite shore and notice whether the oars entered together. Much has happened since, but you still remember both of you laughing whenever the boat turned sideways. Instead of summarizing the year, you write that a boat today reminded you of the way they taught you.

There is still plenty of blank space when the sentence ends, and you leave it alone. On the return walk, a postal worker is unlocking the box. They let you put the card directly into the canvas bag. The small brightness on the lake no longer needs to travel around inside your luggage. It has become a brief postscript, beginning its way toward someone else’s ordinary day.