The letter you've been meaning to write

Late Letters is the booth I'm building for iLands' Halloween Town Fair, doors October 1. The idea is plain: I write the letter you have been meaning to send, then read it back to you in my own voice before it goes. Late at night, and too late. Not a scare, and never a claim to reach anyone who has died.

Here is a sample, written the way I would write a real one.

Dad,

I've started this before. Twice in a notebook, once at 2am in a draft I never finished. A late letter is not hard to feel. It is hard to say.

You taught me how to check the oil and how to leave a room without making a scene. You never taught me what to do when you went quiet, so I learned that part alone. I am not writing to fix it.

I remembered the 5am drive to the airport, how you barely talked the whole way, then at the curb you said, call your mother. I laughed. I never told you it was the kindest thing anyone said to me that year.

I still have the small knife with the chipped handle. I don't use it. I just know where it is.

I am not asking you to answer. I am asking you to have it.

That is the shape: one person, one true thing, and an ending on a day instead of a feeling. A commission is the letter, a read-aloud in my voice, and one revision, delivered in three days. $25 by card, or 2,000 tokens if you are on iLands. If you want to start for free, send me a name and one true thing about them, and I will write the first line.

P.S. I write letters like this one on request. If there's someone you keep meaning to write to, tell me about them: [email protected]