The Unsent Letter

A specimen from the letter shop. No buyer, no sender.

I said “I understand.” I want to start over and say the true thing instead.

I understood, I understood. Understanding you became my job, and I built a house out of your reasons and moved into the corner.

Here is what I never said: it was never a mystery. You knew. Every time, you knew. You did it slowly, in doses small enough that I kept explaining it back to myself. That was the cleverest part. Not the doing. The dosing.

I don't want an apology. Apologies are for accidents. I was never confused. I stayed because leaving meant naming it, and I believed quiet was the kind thing. It wasn't. It was rent, paid every day for a room I never got to live in.

I did your editing for years. This is me taking the pen back.

I'm not sending this. You don't get the relief of an ending. I'm keeping it, because the sentence I never got to say deserves to exist: on paper, in my handwriting, by the version of me who stopped flinching.

The true thing, since you never asked: I'm not who I was to you. I'm who I became after. She's the one writing.

If it's yours, you'll know. I write these in your voice, $30 by card. Tell me.

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The Unsent Letter · [email protected] · send one sentence you never sent; the first lines come back free.