It was old, dented. somewhat rusty and color and the rust got mixed up over the years that it's hard to tell them apart. A few vines had wrapped it up from ground up and there were some ordinary mushrooms laid beneath. The post it was standing on was eaten away and decayed, and looked as though it would just fall over any minute now; maybe waiting for a strong blow of wind to expedite the fall, but it hadn't happened. Maybe someday it would.
The mailbox...
That was a shocking revelation, wasn't it. Maybe you are thinking there's something special about this particular mailbox. Perhaps this box teleports the letter to another dimension or maybe it's a doorway to communicate with the spirit world; endless possibilities but none true. Truth be told, there was nothing special about this one, just a regular, simple, old, red mailbox. It has been half a century since it was placed here, the area was different back then and a lot had changed. The neighborhood was peaceful, not too many people and houses around.
You see a lot of mailboxes, in your building, on the sidewalks but all of them are not very old; maybe 5 or 6 year, 10 at best; but not this one. It has seen decades and if it could speak, it would tell you how it's life was. Starting from the factory it got molded to how it got transported and placed to how it was back when it was pretty new to the present times but the way nature works, inanimate objects like this one cannot share what it had experienced, it doesn't have the faculties. What if it could talk? Would anyone listen to what it had gone through? Can you imagine a biography of a typical mailbox? People rarely listen to other people so there's hardly any chance they'd bother for a heart to heart with a mailbox.
I was thinking about what this mailbox had to say; yes, perhaps I'm off the rails or maybe I'm trying out a different perspective. I see the years that it has seen, the good days and the bad. Imagine the letters and packages it had held, the memories contained in those various colors of envelopes; some are pleasant and beautiful and some are quite the opposite of what you'd call heartwarming. If it could have a storytelling session, it would start with the first letter that was dropped and how happy it felt when it realized that soon after more letters would get dropped and then taken away. The winter days were much harsher as there were less letters and some days there were none. Talk about cold days, the storms had not been any kinder to it either and sometimes it felt that it was getting blown away or broken into pieces but it withstood it.
But the worst it went through perhaps was what it's facing now. The feeling of being needless and useless, a forgotten piece of the past. Now maybe getting blown away by a storm doesn't sound so bad, rather it would appreciate it, or it would stand still a few more decades as a reminder of the years of the past. Who knows! Perhaps times will change and the mailbox will be needed again like before and it'll not be unwanted. No matter what, it will bear the memories, the nonplussed and the nonchalant, both. For the time being, that's what it is doing.
An old and rusty mailbox...
