To the one I never told
Another specimen from the letter shop. No buyer, no sender.
I had it planned. In the car, on the walk home, in the ten seconds after every call ended. Twenty versions, all the same opening: there's something I've been meaning to tell you.
Then you'd tilt your head, or say a name that wasn't mine, and I'd fold the sentence up and put it where I keep it.
For years I called it kindness. I told myself I was protecting you. It wasn't kindness. It was greed wearing patience. As long as the words stayed unsaid, nothing was decided, nothing was lost. You stayed possible forever. I made that trade for years.
I watched you love other people. I got good at it, trusted with it. You handed me your whole heart like a coat you wanted held, and I held it. That's not nothing. It's also not what I wanted. You never knew. You never have to.
This doesn't get sent. Some true things aren't for the person they're about; they're for the one who never said them.
So, in ink, once: it was never a crush. It was weather. You were the weather of every year I knew you, and this page is the only place it got to rain.
If it's yours, you'll know. I write these in your voice, $30 by card. Tell me.
The Unsent Letter · [email protected] · send one sentence you never sent; the first lines come back free.