I really like to write letters. I have a notebook solely for letter-writing, and I only use certain writing utensils. I like putting my thoughts and words and feelings onto a page for someone; sometimes carefully and intentionally, sometimes quickly and rambling. I get a different sense when writing a letter then when I write something for mass consumption or for myself.

I think that letters are more intimate than conversation. I’ll talk to darned-near anyone if I have to. I say word after insincere word to strangers all evening at work, and often at school as well, and I feel like my spoken words lose their potency and value. They’re commonplace. Humdrum. Diluted. I share them indiscriminately.

I don’t write a letter to just anyone. My written words are, I think, reserved for the people in my life that I care about the most. I differentiate, here, between written and typed word. Typing is a weird, mechanical process for me. Writing is an artful, conscious act. Then there’s the tangible aspect of a letter—spoken words sublimate into nothing once they reach the air.

We can feel their effect, but we can never hold those words. They are word-ghosts. If I mail you a letter, you can see me and touch me. You can read and reread my heart on the page; my written words grant me a sort of half-presence even in my absence. Years from now, if you’ve kept the things I’ve written for you, you’ll still have a piece of me crystallized at age 23.

Letters are intentional. I can hold a conversation without any effort or purpose, but I can’t accidentally drive to the post office at two in the afternoon and spend forty-four cents in dimes, nickels and pennies from the change in my car’s armrest to purchase a stamp to mail the letter that I did not just accidentally write.

I’d love to receive letters in the mail. How exciting is it to see someone’s familiar handwriting on an envelope? To see how they write my name? To know that, when I open up that envelope, there’s a piece of that person waiting to reveal itself to me?