Dana Vespoli Dear Better — Works 100%

You’ve built a lovely life on omissions, the letter continued. But omissions are just lies with good posture. I’m here to collect the debt.

I live in the walls, Dana Vespoli. Not as a ghost. Not as a rat. As a memory you buried wrong. Remember the summer you were twelve, and you told your sister she could have the last piece of peach cobbler? You lied. You ate it at midnight, standing over the sink, and you never told her. That’s me. That’s all the little truths you fed to the dark. dana vespoli dear

Dana Vespoli dear, she whispered to herself, the way her grandmother used to begin every scolding. And then she got up, very slowly, and walked toward the bedroom, leaving the letter on the table beside the wilting geraniums and the unpaid bill. You’ve built a lovely life on omissions, the

Dana turned the envelope over, thumb tracing the wax seal—crimson, unmarked, as if it had been pressed by a ring she didn’t recognize. She lived alone now, in the small house by the salt marsh where the fog rolled in each evening like a held breath. The mail came at four. By 4:03, she had the letter open and the kitchen light on, even though the sun was still out. I live in the walls, Dana Vespoli

Dear Dana Vespoli,