$9.35 is the cost of peace.

Postage on a package that carries the last leverage you’ll ever have and the last words I ever need to say. The sender and the recipient read the same, because no matter what, it needs to make it to you. I won’t be taking it back.

For less than $10 I can be done with what ails me. And for you, that might be a loan never repaid, a shirt never returned, a plan never executed. Peace is always available for a price. 

We’re often too remiss to pay it. It feels wrong, sometimes, to buy our way out of something. But what you’ll learn is that there’s seldom another way. There’s no version of leaving that takes place quietly in the night that isn’t followed by hollers at daybreak. There is no clean break, no quick getaway. There is no way for you to take your peace without inciting a little war.

We’ve all entered these little contractual debts: You’ve chosen to mean something in my life so mean that thing forever. Somewhere instinctual, we know that things change because that’s what things do. But on our own, wasteful human level, we’ve decided to make that mean something about us. 

What is ultimately simple is made by design into something excruciatingly tedious. How does one put into words this need not mean anything about you, this is just the way it is? The human heart would never believe it. And that’s why we must pay our little fines. 

Admin fees and broken clauses and something for your trouble. There are very few people for whom it will go unnoticed when we go. And for those of us who don’t have grievances left to air or crosses left to bear, wouldn’t it be easier if we could just go through the back door and not say the thing everyone is hoping not to hear anyway?

It’s a simple thing, really, complicated by the tenderness of the human heart. Our tastes in music change and so do our preferences for food. And when we decide we’re sick of salmon filets and pop punk, it’s a dear thing to own this new piece of ourselves. But it’s a nasty business not to like a person anymore. It wreaks a havoc on the system that is mirrored into the world, and why must it be so? 

There are so many of us here, go find yours! Find someone who is passing by at exactly the same time in exactly the same place and let them go as their stride changes. Let’s not be covetous and greedy. I am not yours to keep just because you found me in a moment when I had something to give.

I am not so unkind, I am merely rattling against a cage. For a time, this was a fine thing. Why must we change that because the time has passed?