he writes back. it takes him years. the letters arrive, eventually, on a day on which they are still useful — not the day they were needed, but a day on which their absence had begun to seem like a small companion of its own.
he is the patron of the unanswered postcard, the message in a drafts folder, the letter unwritten for nine seasons. he does not apologise. he believes — and the building agrees — that a late reply is not a worse reply. it is only a different one.
those who owe a letter may write a single sentence to him in pencil on the back of any envelope and seal it without an address. it goes where it goes. a reply may arrive in the next decade, in the form of an afternoon when one feels, finally, forgiven.
— late-letter saint, forgive the silence that was already a kind of writing.
see also: a letter returned, a small treatment for correspondence, and a letter that appeared in a dream.