He handed the envelope to me this morning,
The young builder, wielding a sledgehammer and a smile.
He found it by chance, without any warning,
Thought it might have been there for a while.
In the crevices of the bricks and mortar he was breaking,
The hammer and muscles bringing the roof down.
Destruction before creation, the new kitchen we were making,
A piece of paper, sepia, against the dusty brown.
Bemused I held the letter, for a letter it was,
And sat by the roses, on the old wooden bench.
And as I read, I felt at loss,
The letters in the letter, tugged a wrench.
‘Hello,’ it said, in a childish scrawl,
‘My name is Julie, I’m six years old.
This is Peggy,’ a stick figure doll.
‘We live in this house, and we both hate the cold.’
Julie’s parents wanted an extra room,
For she was soon getting a sister or a brother.
‘Write a letter, and we’ll hide it here,
Like a time-capsule,’ had said her mother.
I checked the date, it was 1970 in June,
Which made Julie my age today.
I found myself at the library soon,
‘I’d like to trace a Julie Roberts,’ I say.
‘Well, what are the odds,’ the librarian said,
‘That used to be my maiden-name.
She came to see, our home with me,
And said it looked just the same!