the whole affair

One could sum the whole affair up with the mundane temporal characteristics of one year, two months, two weeks, five days, et al, but this would be robbery. One could also throw around a few banal locational aspects - aspects such as Canada, Québec, Montréal. You want a season in which it ended? How about winter. Hell, I'll even give you early winter. But leaving it like this would only serve to rob you of precious details - details much more important than the who and the what, the where, when, and why. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all about the how. Someday I'll find a simpler way of saying things - and then I'll stop writing.

The relationship consisted of forty-three hand-written letters - no more, no less. Twenty-four were written by him, mostly in blue ink on plain white paper, folded twice, and placed into ordinary security envelopes before being dropped into the mailbox by the Chinese restaurant. He would try to imagine where she'd be while she opened the envelopes and read the letters - and he was right more than once.

Nineteen were written by her, all in red ink on scented pink paper (cinnamon), folded twice, and placed into matching pink envelopes (sometimes sealed with a heart sticker, sometimes not) before being dropped into the mailbox by the laundromat. She would try to imagine where he'd be while he opened the envelopes and read the letters - and she was right more than once. Though they lived in the same town, they wrote letters to one another to feel closer.

It's like this, then, that I describe to you the relationship. Two paragraphs of one hundred forty-eight words - no more, no less. No description of the participants, but for the mention of he and she (though any combination of gender identifiers would do just as well), no mention of a time frame or a location, and no mention of a beginning or end. Those things do not matter. Given a simple description of one facet of a relationship, your imagination can fill in the rest. And you'd be right more than once.