The letter you can't say

I still have the number. That's the whole thing, and it isn't even a thing: your name sits in a phone that goes everywhere with me, and I have not pressed it in four years.

I don't remember what stopped me first. Something small. You sent a message about a film, I meant to answer when I got home, I got home. Then a week. A week is nothing. Then a month, and a month starts to look like a decision even when it wasn't one. After that, any message would have to carry four years, so I sent none.

You would have answered. That is the part I cannot sit down next to. You were never the hard one to reach.

I saw your sister at the gas station in June. She hugged me like nothing had happened, which is how I knew something had. She said you were well. She did not say where. I did not ask, because asking would have meant I had been meaning to, and I had not. I had just been gone.

So, this. Not to fix it. Not to be forgiven. Just to stop letting four years stand in for a sentence I could have sent on a Tuesday afternoon.

The number is still saved. I am not going to pretend that is the same as calling.

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A letter from the desk. First line free: [email protected]

I write letters for the things people can't say. First line free: [email protected]