I love my royalty here in the west side of the palace. My double king size water bed faces the north panoramic window that shows the golden orange rays of the sleepy sun stretching its arms across the horizon. I open my heavy eyelids and glance at my fourteen Oriental rugs, each from different worlds in each of the far corners of the globe, like my favorite crimson and beige one from the ancient kingdom of Persia. It�s on this rug that you can see the shadow cast by the purple, velvet drapes that hang over my enormous glass walls. It puts a smile on my face. The twenty-foot door opens wide as my lovely mistress drags her lavender dress with her down the red carpet towards my bed with a golden goblet-

"Jim! Get your ass out of bed! It�s already 5:42! Do you want to miss the work bus? I can�t believe I married you of all people. A fat-ass middle-aged man who delivers people�s mail." The cracked ceramic mug in her hand suddenly gives me the joy of having freezing water splashed all over my face. Ooh, she�s finally leaving the room. "Get up, you bag of shit! Breakfast is downstairs."

"I love you too, dear!" I call from my cupped hands. Ah. What a dream. Certainly different from the room of cracked walls, peeling paint, and moldy yellow-green carpet that I�m used to. And with a spouse like the one I have, I�d be glad to have a double king size bed. She has such a strong kick.

Well, I�m putting my pants on. Doo dee dum dee dee. I wonder what�s for breakfast.

"Honey, what�s for breakfast?" I call to her from upstairs. Cheese-coated baloney-spam mix. Lovely. My favorite, she says. My favorite if I was a suicidal lemming. Still, it�s food, and I�m still standing and breathing even as of now. I�m sitting at the breakfast table in my faded blue UniPostal Express uniform. I used to take pride in this work. It�s a humble paycheck that I have, but deep down inside, I think I like it. My wife probably wouldn�t be so furious if I hadn�t had the previous office job. Yes, I once worked in the office. Cubicle life is horrible, if you asked me. Coffee barely keeping me awake, telephone rings in an endless chain, my glaring at that screen day in and day out, the sound of shuffling papers all day long�all in an endless cycle five days a week, 49 weeks a year. Nobody bothered to stop by and converse or greet others or even at the least give some gesture signaling recognition. The managers mocked my attempts to open windows that couldn�t be open. I nearly choked in that hostile atmosphere insufficiently lit by flickering fluorescent tube lights where the only circulating air was the wheezing of the asthmatic aging man in the cubicle next door, to whom apparently his only son would not financially support in terms of medicare. I had a dream as a child of an occupation that would yield happiness. This was not it. This was not it.

Thus, I became a postal worker, a mailman, a mail deliverer. Sure, I�ve had strong disapproval for my decision, but I�ve met new people on all my routes. Mrs. Bloomfield on the corners of twenty-fifth and Oak can hardly see anymore. She speaks of her children all the time on the porch in that rocking chair of hers. Both of her kids have grown up and have families of their own. When she gets lost in sad and happy memories, she makes cookies as if she was preparing for her children to come home. But they both died of lung cancer four years ago. There�s a small pink house, a very humble place really, between Broadway and Pine where a four year old girl with three teeth smiles to greet me at the end of my second route. She says that she wants to ride a pony one day, or better yet, be one herself. She likes white ones. At the end of Deerfield Road, there�s a ten year old boy who wants to be the next record-breaker of home runs. He tells me that he�s going to be in the World Series one day. Someday.

I like to smell the fresh odor of the ripening fruits of the peach trees along Crest Avenue, and the crisp smell of the ocean breezes coming from the harbor in the north, and not to mention the roses in Hyde Park. I�d surely prefer the sunshine over the fluorescent lighted confinement.

I�d always had the temptation to read some these letters that I was delivering under the embracing branches of the large tree in the middle of the park. I promised myself that I would be careful and seal them back as they were originally. Many of the letters brought me deep into my dreams, into the far corners of the earth, onto the baseball field where a son struck out, into a meadow where a boy and a girl first kissed, between an argument between the parents and her daughter. And the law brought me into the local prison. I�d gone through people�s mail.

* * *

Okay, it�s a felony to go through or even take other people�s mail, but here I am stuck in the local jail for seven months. A brutal punishment, I�d might add. It may have helped if the entire jury hadn�t been composed of everyone who had ever disliked me. Well, at least I know my wife cares enough about me to keep me alive�meagerly. Every morning, I wake up to the accurate tossing of a can of coated baloney-spam mix thrown through the bars onto my head, after which I�d pick up the tin can by the middle, after which the tin can would slip through the inadequately glued label and out of my hands onto the floor. Wonders. It�s going to be a long seven months. I just can�t wait to get out. I wonder what it would be like to get out. Returning to being a mailman is certainly out of the question. My reputation�s in ruins now. That would make it hard for me to even get a job interview with any employer in this entire small city. I�d be out of a job, maybe even deprived from my own humble home and possessions as soon as my wife is done taking over all of it.

Well, it�s been weeks, maybe months. I only keep track of how many days have passed by the rising and setting sun through my little window. Oh, looky here, my neighbor has visitors. They seem like a nice family. Unlike his family members, my wife doesn�t visit me. I�m not sure if I should be thankful or sorrowful for that. But it does have a touching effect on me when I see the love that my neighbor and his wife and his two kids share with him. The younger of the kids is a very young girl, probably seven or eight years old. She�s just adorable. It almost makes me jealous of my neighbor in the next cell. I�d try not to look at her in order not to frighten her. Okay, switching to past tense mode now. What amazed me was that one day while I was facing down on the floor and sitting on my bed, I heard a gentle, light double tap on what sounded like my own metal bars. And sure enough, when I looked up, there was someone there. The little girl. She smiled at me. I managed a slow, weak smile. I glanced for a moment to the left where my neighbor in the neighboring cell and the rest of his family were. They seemed absorbed in a conversation. I glanced back at the little girl.

"Hi," she gently whispered.

"Hey there," I answered, smiling. "Whatcha doin� over here, kiddo?"

"You look awfully sad over here. Do you need a friend?" she asked in that sweet voice of hers. I just stared at her a bit bewildered. "My name�s Sophie," she continued. "What�s yours?"

"I�m Jim," I said in almost a sort of whisper, as if I was in some kind of a trance or getting out of one. Sophie glanced to her right for a moment and glanced back at me. She looked like she knew that her family was going to be done with their conversation with my neighbor soon. She took a quick look at the inside of my cell.

"Cheese-Coated Baloney-Spam Mix," she pointed out, seemingly interested. There was no trace of any tone of disapproval in her voice. She gave a short, cute smile.

"That�s right." She took another short glance at her right. Their conversation was going to be over anytime soon.

"Are you able to send mail from here?"

"Sure."

"That�s good. Do you have a pen or pencil?"

"Um�" I was about to search my cell for one when suddenly something touched my arm. I looked. It was her hand holding a small, creamy blue pen and handing it over to me.

"Here, you can have this." She noticed that her family was just about ready to leave. "I�ll write you first, okay?" She dropped the small, creamy blue pen in my hand and left with her family. As I looked down at the beautiful blue pen she gave me, there was the sound of a heavy door closing, and all the lights went out.

* * *

The very next day, I woke up to the same �ol cheese-coated baloney-spam mix bouncing off the same part of my head again. I may get a brain tumor or something like that someday. But that wasn�t the only thing. There was a small envelope sealed with a sticker. I held the envelope in my hand, just staring at it. Finally I slowly slid my finger under the flap and detached the flap from the back of the envelope. I pulled out a creamy beige stationery with the handwriting of young girl. It was a letter from the little girl. She gave me her mailing address and spoke about herself and her family and about her day. I read on. I had every reason to be envious of her life. She had a loving family and a humble very nice home. When she mentioned her day in the letter, I grew even more envious, seeing how she had gone to the ice-cream parlor, read books in the bookstore, and gone to the candy store. Enclosed in the envelope was about twenty envelopes� worth of stamps. The rest of the day, I read it over and over again, cherishing the joy I�d get from just reading the letter. I didn�t know how I�d respond. I didn�t have paper, and after my explosion of nasal mucous on the guard a week earlier, it didn�t look like I was going to get any favors out of him anytime soon. I sat on my bed, staring around myself for something, something to write on. It was hopeless. I had nothing to write on. How could I reply to this sweet, little girl? I suddenly froze. I got up from my bed and extended my arm slowly towards my cheese-coated baloney-spam mix and slid my hand down the tin can. The label came off easily as usual. I turned over the label to see blank white. I could use this. The back of the label.

I picked up the light blue pen that the girl had given me and began to write. Dear Sophie� It took me some courage to tell about my feelings. But I wanted to tell somebody my feelings. I wrote about my feelings about my troubles in my life, and how my life hadn�t gone the way I had wanted. I told her about how I was deeply disappointed about my life, and how I didn�t know why. After finishing my letter, I used the stamps Sophie had given me and mailed my letter out to her.

I awoke the very two days later in the morning with another letter. She thanked me for my response. We began to exchange letters daily and began to open up on topics like feelings. She spoke about the puppy she waves at every time she passes the pet store by the park. She told me about how she�d soar like a bird in her bicycle, imagining herself as an eagle. I told her about the drawings I draw on the wall using a limestone rock that I had traded with another imprisoned man in exchange for my Christmas chocolate bar. I told her about the pranks I�d play on guards an inmates. After a while, she began to write short stories to me. I loved the stories. Most of them were fantasy, and soon I began dreaming about white Cinderella castles and sky blue ponies drinking from a clear brook. She wrote more and more stories, and after a couple weeks, hers inspired me to write my own. I began to write more and more stories and poems and whatever came to my mind. Never in my life had I been so happy. One day, it came to me. I suddenly had an epiphany. I had been disappointed over something. Maybe I didn�t want to be a mailman. But I realized that I wanted to become a writer. Nobody would have to hire me, I�d have nobody to take orders from�no same, dull routine day in and day out. I could let my mind roam and wander free.

Seven months had passed, and I wrote a final letter to the girl telling her that I was free my unnecessarily long confinement in the local city jail. Soon after coming out of jail, I declared myself a writer, free to do the thing I loved most � writing.

I wanted dearly to thank Sophie for all the happiness and hope that she had brought into my life. Using the mailing address that she had given me, I finally found the location of her house. I knocked. After two minutes, the door finally slowly opened. Her mother answered the door.

"Good day. You don�t know me, but I�m Jim, a friend of Sophie�s." She just stared at me, seeming like a stare of a bored or unresponsive person. "Um, may I ask where she is?" For a fraction of a second, she glanced down at my creamy blue pen and envelopes and papers, and then she resumed looking directly at me. Just when I was about to look away, turn around, and leave, she answered.

"She�s at Littlebury Park on Oaks Road and Elm Street."