The Mail Slot Sounds Like a Threat Now

Dear Delyara, I hear the envelopes hit the floor and my stomach drops before I even see them. That’s what debt has done to me. It has taken something as ordinary as the afternoon mail and made it sound like warning. Bills, notices, “friendly reminders,” payment dates, the whole ugly little language of being behind. The shame is not only in the numbers. It’s in the way my body reacts like I’m in danger inside my own house. It’s in the fact that I now stand at the kitchen counter opening envelopes with the same feeling I imagine people have before blood test results. I am tired of paper having this much power over my pulse. I am tired of money entering the room before tenderness. I am tired of how smaller I have become without anyone needing to say “less.”