How it works
You write it today
Any length. The median is about four hundred words, and most people write past the point where they meant to stop.
It is printed and filed within a day
On paper, sealed, in a drawer marked with the month it goes out. Physically. Nothing sits on a server overnight.
It shows up twelve months later
First class, no return address on the front, no reminder email beforehand. You will have forgotten, which is the entire mechanism.
The cabinet
Four drawers, one per quarter, in the back of a shared studio on Wyandotte. When a month comes up, someone takes that drawer to the post office on 18th and mails it. That is the whole operation and we do not intend to grow it.
Letters people sent back
Occasionally somebody writes to us after theirs arrives. We keep those with permission and we do not edit them.
I wrote mine three days after losing a job and spent the year assuming it would be unbearable to read. It arrived and I had to sit down, because the person who wrote it was so much more frightened than the situation turned out to deserve.
R., Springfield, February 2026
Nothing in mine had come true and nothing in it had gone wrong either. It was just a Tuesday described very carefully by somebody who thought it mattered. It did matter. I had forgotten all of it.
Ana O., Kansas City, April 2026
Price
| First letter | Free, postage included |
|---|---|
| After that | $9 each, postage included |
| Held for | 12 months, to the week |
| Copies kept | None |