I had another weekend of heavy-duty cleaning, most of it in my cubicle at work - I moved to a new one in July, and have been navigating around boxes ever since.

The boxes are mostly full of old paperwork, reams of which could be recycled if I’d just take the time to sort out the few things I actually need to retain. I had to go into the office Saturday to help test an application whose server just moved to the suburbs, so I decided to stick around afterward and finally go through the files I’ve been dragging from cube to cube for years.

I was deep into 1998 when I found this note written on the back of a torn-off piece of cardstock:

This morning I put on what I think might be a clean shirt. I guess it isn’t because there’s a half eaten fortune cookie in the pocket. I start to throw it away (it’s all soft and icky) but it conjures up some fond recollections so I put it back and carry it around for a while. Then I realize that I spend most of my whole dang day pondering the many wonders of you and/or take-out Chinese anyway, so I finally toss it.

It’s a relic from that fertile ground for love letters, the time after a relationship becomes long-distance but before the distance begins to dissolve the relationship entirely. The note arrived in an envelope full of other bits of paper, each with just a few sentences on it, small stories and things that occurred to him throughout the day. I took my favorite to work, and kept it nearby up until the day I dropped it into whatever file was handy, just to get it out of sight.

Only to have it turn up years later, a half-eaten fortune cookie in a manilla folder.