Vox Meditantis

15th July, 1925
Chicago, Illinois

My Dearest Frank,

As I sit at my writing desk this warm summer evening, the windows thrown wide to catch whatever breeze might stir through the sultry Chicago air, I find myself overwhelmed by the most exquisite ache—that peculiar sensation that seems to lodge itself somewhere between my heart and throat whenever I think of you. The elevated train has just rattled past, carrying its cargo of weary souls homeward, and in the sudden quiet that follows, your absence feels particularly acute.

It has been three weeks since your last letter arrived—three weeks that have stretched like an eternity. I confess I have haunted the postbox with an embarrassing regularity that would surely amuse you, checking twice daily with the sort of desperate hope typically reserved for gamblers and believers. Mrs. Kellner from the haberdashery below has begun to regard me with concerned glances, no doubt wondering what manner of correspondence could inspire such fervent anticipation in her ordinarily composed tenant.

But oh, Frank, how could I possibly explain to her—or to anyone—the way your letters have become the very rhythm by which I measure time? Each envelope bearing your distinctive script transforms an ordinary Tuesday into Christmas morning, each page a doorway into your sun-drenched world that feels impossibly distant from my grey Chicago existence.

I have read your last letter so many times that the paper has grown soft beneath my fingertips, the ink slightly faded from my constant handling. You wrote of diving near the Marquesas Keys, of discovering what you believed might be remnants from a seventeenth-century Spanish treasure fleet. Your description of descending through layers of aquamarine water, of the way sunlight fractures and dances in the depths—it transported me so completely that I could almost taste the salt on my lips, feel the gentle pressure of the current against my skin.

How desperately I long to witness such wonders through my own eyes rather than through the beautiful prison of words on a page! I find myself studying maps of Florida with the devotion of a medieval scholar poring over illuminated manuscripts. I have traced the route from Chicago to Key West so many times that I could navigate it in my sleep: south through Illinois, into Kentucky, through the rolling hills of Tennessee and Georgia, down through the humid embrace of mainland Florida until the land gives way to that impossible string of islands that leads to your tropical paradise.

Sometimes, in the quiet hours before dawn when the city sleeps and even the ever-present rumble of commerce falls silent, I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to wake beside you. Not merely the physical presence—though heaven knows I yearn for that with an intensity that would scandalise my Methodist upbringing—but the simple miracle of sharing a sunrise with you. I picture you on your dock at dawn, that contemplative stillness you’ve described settling over you like a prayer, and I imagine myself there too, learning the rhythm of your morning ritual, discovering the particular shade of rose and gold that paints your Florida sky.

The irony is not lost on me that here I am, surrounded by more books and accumulated wisdom than most people encounter in a lifetime, yet I feel utterly ignorant of the things that matter most. What good are all my degrees and dissertations when they cannot teach me the exact texture of your laughter or the precise way your eyes crinkle when you smile? What value is there in my ability to discuss Proust’s philosophy of memory when I am creating all my most precious memories in solitude, through the alchemy of ink and imagination?

Yet even as I confess this longing that threatens to consume me entirely, I find myself buoyed by the most extraordinary hope. For in your letters, I sense a kindred spirit wrestling with the same beautiful torment. When you write of sitting on your dock and wondering what I might be doing at that precise moment in Chicago, when you describe pressing tropical flowers between the pages of books to send to me, when you admit that you have begun to time your diving expeditions around postal deliveries—in these admissions, I recognise my own heart speaking back to me across the impossible distance.

And so I nurture this hope like a gardener tends a delicate seedling. I have begun to save money from my library salary—not much, mind you, but enough to suggest that dreams might one day transform into train tickets. I research the lending libraries in Florida, wondering if my skills might translate to your sunny climes. I even purchased a book on marine biology, determined to understand your underwater world with the same intellectual rigour I apply to my literary studies.

Is it terribly forward of me to confess that I have begun to imagine a life where our morning conversations need not be delayed by postal services? Where your stories of underwater adventures could be shared over breakfast rather than transcribed in letters? Where the gentle teasing that sparkles through your correspondence could be accompanied by the warmth of your actual presence?

Perhaps it is the romantic in me—that part of my nature that my practical Midwestern upbringing tried so hard to suppress—but I believe that what we have built through these letters is not merely correspondence but something far more substantial. We have created a bridge across the void, a connection that distance cannot diminish and time only seems to strengthen.

Until that glorious day when we need no longer rely on words alone, I remain,

Your devoted and ever-hopeful, Martha

P.S. I have enclosed a small bookmark I crafted from ribbon and card stock, decorated with a sketch of the Chicago skyline as seen from my library window. I thought you might enjoy having a piece of my daily view to accompany you on your own reading adventures.

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Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.