"The Week it Rained"
an excerpt

An Excerpt From "The Week it Rained"

He sat crouched in an awkward squat over at the far end of the attic, where the roof sloped down and met the attic floor. He lifted up the lid of the trunk causing spiders to scatter, their webs torn apart. He stared at the contents within, not entirely sure why he was drawn back up there to once again read the letters of some strangers history. He reached in and took out a stack of the letters that someone else has so painstakingly placed there. Wrapped in ribbons and bows, tied together in time. The contents vulnerable and defenseless to the intrusion.
He was quite certain that this man had won the heart of the woman to whom these letters were written. It never dawned on him that the words in these letters never accomplished that which they set out to do. He was sure this person had conquered his great love this way and with the contents of the trunk, he was going to do the very same thing for himself.
Lost in a manic and romantic plunder, he embezzled the emotions entrusted to old, abandoned love letters, losing reality between what was his and what belonged to the letter. And he stole the words from these letters and made them his own. This undertaking, he told himself, improved the love he had for her because he was now seeing it, reading it through different eyes. And he thought this made him worthy.