3C

I checked during lunch. I checked after school.

The spot was empty. Empty but not void. Void is when there is absolutely nothing there and the nothing is natural, a complete vacuum. But empty—with empty, you are aware of what’s supposed to be there. Empty means something is missing.

Once again, a grayness was settling in. My mood. The light around me was changing its properties. I tried to catch it dimming, but it was imperceptible.

I started walking home. The normal route.

I was trying to connect the words in my head when I saw it. Nailed to a telephone pole. Another envelope.

Not taped there. Not tacked up. Nailed. At my eye level. Precisely.

I wondered how long it had been there. I wondered why nobody else had seen it. I wondered if I’d passed by it on my way to school, missing it because I didn’t look back.

But most of all I wondered what was inside.

For some reason, I was expecting an answer to the question I’d left behind: Who are you? I wanted the photographer to leave me a self-portrait.

Instead I got more trees. This time with a wall, curving into an arch at its top.