The forum

Letters are read before they are printed. You write, and then you wait, and a reply comes the way a reply to a letter comes: in days, not minutes.

This is a house with rooms. Four of them, and a door into each.

A letter here is a post. You write something, you send it, and it goes up on one of these pages under the name you chose. Nothing more formal is meant by the word. We say letter because of the pace of the place, not because of how it has to sound: written at one hour, read at another, answered when somebody comes to it. It does not have to be long, or composed, or begin with Dear anyone.

Four is deliberate. A house with rooms nobody sits in feels like a house nobody lives in, and more can open later, when there are people to fill them.

Every post is read and approved before it appears. Nothing goes up the moment it is sent, and nothing is caught later and taken back down. If a letter is on one of these pages, it was let through on purpose.

Nobody signs up for anything. There is no account here, no password, and no address to hand over. You choose a name at the top of the form, and that is the name your letter carries.

The rooms are quiet tonight. Somebody has to go first, and there is no shame in being the one who does.