Letters to My Past Life: A Short Story

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The first letter arrived on a Thursday morning.

It was lying on the doormat like an old photograph—edges curled, paper yellowed with time. The handwriting was neat, too neat, with the kind of deliberate loops and slanted strokes that belonged to someone who still believed in patience. No return address. Just my name, written in a way that looked both familiar and foreign, like seeing yourself in a dream you can’t quite recall.

I hesitated before picking it up. The envelope was sealed with red wax, pressed with the shape of a tiny hourglass. For a moment, I thought it was some kind of prank or marketing gimmick. But the weight of it—light yet oddly personal—made me pause. It felt… intentional.

Inside, the letter began simply:

Dear Me,

If this finds you, it means the cycle has begun again.

Don’t be afraid. I remember how disoriented you must feel. You and I have lived this life before, though not in this skin, not with this name. There are things I must tell you before time folds in on itself again.

I read it twice, maybe three times. The words didn’t make sense, but the rhythm of them did. Like a song you can’t remember learning but somehow know all the words to.

The letter went on to describe details from my life no stranger could possibly know. My chipped blue mug with the crack down the handle. The way I hum under my breath while waiting for the microwave. The scar under my left knee from when I fell off my bike at twelve.

Then, one line that made me freeze:

The dream about the field—don’t go there yet. It isn’t time.

Because I had dreamt about a field. For weeks now, every night. A vast open plain under a white sky, wind combing through tall grass that whispered my name. Always the same, always fading when I tried to walk toward the horizon.

I folded the letter back into its envelope and left it on the kitchen counter, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The second letter came three days later.

Same wax seal. Same looping handwriting. This one began with a question:

Do you still feel the weight in your chest when it rains?

I did. Every downpour left me restless, haunted by a sadness I couldn’t name.

It’s not from this life, the letter continued. It’s a residue from the last. The rain reminds you of what you lost—her laughter, the orchard, the fire. None of it exists now, but your soul remembers. Souls always remember.

I read those words over and over, a quiet panic blooming in me. Who was her? What fire?

That night, I dreamt again of the field—but this time, I wasn’t alone.

A figure stood in the distance, half-shrouded in mist. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew, with that deep, aching certainty that lives somewhere between the ribs, that she was the one the letter spoke of.

When I woke, I could still smell smoke.

The next morning, I found another envelope, already waiting on my doorstep before sunrise.

You’ve seen her now, it began. Good. That means memory is stirring. But don’t seek her yet. Every life we live begins to mirror the last when we become too curious. This is how the cycle traps us. You must learn what you couldn’t before—how to let go before it ends.

I sat with that letter for a long time, watching the light shift through my curtains. I wasn’t sure what was real anymore—the letters, the dreams, or the strange sense that something inside me had been quietly waiting for this.

Days passed. Each letter seemed to know what I was feeling before I did.

Don’t blame yourself for the fire.
Forgiveness is not forgetting—it’s remembering without bleeding.
There is beauty in endings. You must believe that.

I started carrying the letters with me, folded neatly in my bag like secret maps. I’d reread them on the train, at lunch, in bed under the glow of my bedside lamp. They felt alive somehow—changing tone as if responding to my thoughts.

Then, one night, a new one arrived—but not by post. It was slipped under my door while I was still awake.

The handwriting trembled this time, hurried, ink smudged.

I don’t have much time. The field isn’t a dream. It’s where we left everything unfinished. You’ll be drawn there soon—don’t resist. Bring the letters with you. They’ll guide you when I can’t.

I didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, I packed the letters into a small tin box and drove without knowing where I was going. It felt instinctual, as if my hands on the steering wheel remembered what my mind couldn’t. The road wound through the countryside, under skies the color of pewter. I stopped when I saw it—a field stretching endlessly beneath a pale sun. The same one from my dreams.

The air was still, too still. The grass swayed without wind, whispering faintly like voices speaking through water. I stepped forward, the tin box clutched against my chest.

For every step I took, the world seemed to shift—light bending, sounds dulling. The scent of rain and smoke thickened around me. I felt dizzy, weightless, as if I were walking through the skin of time itself.

And then I saw her.

She stood in the distance, hair dark and loose, wearing a white dress stained faintly at the hem. She looked up as if she’d been waiting all along.

“You came back,” she said, her voice carrying like wind through leaves.

“Who are you?” I asked, though I already knew.

She smiled—sadly, tenderly. “The one you couldn’t save.”

Something inside me cracked open then. Images rushed through me, disjointed but vivid: a burning house, the sound of horses, a woman’s scream. My hands, reaching into the fire. The field—this field—under a different sun.

I fell to my knees. “I remember.”

“You weren’t meant to carry it forever,” she said softly. “You tried to rewrite it in every life. You never let it end.”

I reached out to her, but she stepped back, fading slightly at the edges.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s time to stop writing letters to what’s already forgiven.”

When she disappeared, the wind rose for the first time—gentle, warm, filled with the scent of apples and ashes. I buried the tin box in the earth, right where she had stood.

The next morning, when I returned home, there was one last letter waiting.

Dear Me,

You did it.

The field is at peace now. You won’t dream of it again. But you’ll dream of something else—something new. Maybe this is the first life that won’t need another. Remember this feeling. You’ve earned it.

With love,
—You, before you forgot.

I never received another letter after that.

But sometimes, on quiet mornings, when sunlight hits the corner of my kitchen just right, I see a shadow of that field reflected in the window glass. The grass swaying. The white sky.

And in those moments, I understand—
some stories end not with a period, but with a deep, relieved breath.