"What Rachel Didn't Know" by Denise H. Long in Burrow Press Review

 

What Rachel didn’t know about the letters she wrote to Private First Class Moralez was that sometimes he ate them. He would read them from beginning to end and then he would lick the paper. He would run his finger along the jagged edges where Rachel had torn the paper from her spiral notebook, imagining her fingers pulling on the page and the tightly coiled metal resisting as it ripped. Soggy with his sweat and tears and saliva, the pages would tear off easily in his teeth. In his mouth, he would rub his tongue around these morsels covered in Rachel’s words. When the paper was almost dissolved, he would swallow. The pages tasted like Rachel’s skin. He could close his eyes and, for just a moment, forget he was in Vietnam. Read story here.