Post Office of Thaw

At the foot of the glacier, a red mailbox leans like a tired cardinal against blue ice. All winter, the mountain sorted silence into envelopes sealed with frost.

In spring the meltwater opens every flap. Names drift out, ink blurred to river-music, addresses rewritten by pebbles and moss, stamps shining like fish scales in sun.

I wade in, sleeves full of vanished decades: a letter to a mother now older than weather, a postcard promising apricots in July, a bill for light from a city that burned its grid.

By dusk I stack what can still be read on a stone warm as a held breath. The valley listens as if expecting its own name, and the stream keeps forwarding the rest.