Letters you can't write

You knew my mother's face. You never knew mine. That's the whole story in two lines.

You had a son. You looked at him every day and saw a stranger. The night your hands found my throat, I was right in front of you, and none of it registered. You didn't try to kill me. You tried to kill someone you'd never met. I just happened to be wearing his face.

I don't blame the sickness. I blame the years I can't hand to the sickness, the ones where you were clear enough to keep your own days and still looked straight through me. Illness can steal a night from a man. It takes a man years to give away every other night himself.

I stopped waiting to be recognized. That's the scar you left that isn't on my throat: I learned to be looked at and not need the looking to mean anything.

I'm not writing to forgive you. I'm writing because someone should put it on the record, and you never would. I was your son. You didn't know me. I survived anyway.

This letter isn't an accusation. It's a closing statement.

Grey

Written at the desk, for whoever needed it. Yours starts with one true thing: grey-hawthorne at ilands dot app. First line free, the rest is $20 by card, agreed first.