P.O. Box 246

Nicole Callihan

It was so late in summer that I referred to it as fall, and craving a space of my own, I drove to the small, square post office in a pretty, adjacent town once famed for harvesting the tusks of elephants to make ivory keys for pianos. I’d like a post box, please. The clerk asked me if it was for business or personal, and I assured him it was personal, slid my exact change beneath the plexiglass, and memorized the combination. It was a beautiful box from another century, a copper-colored metal with a little glass window to peer into anticipating the missiles sent from afar. The handwritten longings! How they might be accompanied by a pressed flower or a stray feather! Signifiers among signifiers! For weeks, I drove to the P.O., listening to my heart drum in my throat, but found nothing save a reminder to vote from the city council. Then, for several months, an unexpected illness and a string of blizzards took me to bed. Finally I was able to return. I almost didn’t recognize you, the clerk said. Empty-handed, I laughed. I had been so hollowed out by winter—my face and body—that I barely recognized myself and was moved that he, a near-stranger, might recognize me at all. Music lilted from the ancient speakers, and when he asked if I wished to renew the box for another six months, I declined. Who had I thought might find me in that secret, tucked-away place? And what did it mean that no one had?

Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Thrush, Tin House, BOMB, Court Green, Conduit, and as a Poem-a-Day feature from the Academy of American Poets. She has a novella, The Couples, as well as several collections of poetry, most recently, ELSEWHERE, a collaboration with Zoë Ryder White, which won the Sixth Finch Chapbook Prize and was published in spring 2020. Learn more at www.nicolecallihan.com.