Love letters have a way of greatly effecting the heart, for better or worse. And because of this, mine has been wrenched from my chest and thrust into the blistering embers of a dying fire. Firstly, to have received a letter written by her own hand, so delicately looped with the soft lines of her penmanship, raised my hope to the highest it could possibly expect to ascend. My name had been thought up in her mind before being formed by her hand, looked adoringly upon by her eyes, and spoken aloud by her mouth. Flutters of excitement burst within me before I had even unfolded the precise flaps of her disappointingly short letter. I was expecting the lines of the paper to be filled with loving words purging from a shamed heart after having hidden such feelings from me for so long. Alas, my eyes devoured the words on the page, and sooner would I have endeavored to forget the skill of reading than to have read her letter. Although it was a monumental encouragement for my own heart to speak out, it nevertheless revealed itself as a unforgivable folly soon enough. For only two days had passed after having received the letter before I discovered that my beloved Leona had hastened to resigned herself to the silence of death. My darling, beautiful, cherub confessed her love for me and stamped its stifling passion with her own blood as evidence of its domination over her. What she hadn't considered, to my eternal despair, is that I, too, had withheld my true feelings for her, and having done so, I have murdered, most mercilessly, my dear Leona. Her letter read as thus:
