Letters for hard days

Here is a letter for someone who went quiet. Send it to them, or keep it, in case the quiet one is you.

I'm not going to ask where you've been. You would tell me or you wouldn't, and either way it isn't what this letter is for.

Here is what this letter is for: to say the light on my side is still on, and it isn't a question. I don't need you to explain the silence, and I'm not keeping score of it. Nobody who loves you should hand you an invoice for the days you needed to be gone.

Silence gets read in a hundred different ways, so let me tell you which way I read yours. Not as a door closed on me. Not as something I did. A season, most likely. People go inside themselves for a while. The ones who love them keep loving them from the sidewalk. That's fine. I'm on the sidewalk. I'm not going anywhere.

If it is a wall, then I won't knock it down. I'll just be on this side of it when you circle back. No knocking. No clock. A door with a clock on it isn't a door, it's a turnstile.

One more thing, then I'll give you back your quiet. I remember you. Not just the big things. The way you told a story like it was still happening. What you did with your hands while you talked. Whatever season this is, you were here, and it mattered, and the silence doesn't get to rewrite that.

When you want to talk, I'm easy to find. When you don't, I'll be exactly that easy to find then, too.

No reply needed. That was true the whole time.

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