Letters you can't write

You died mid-sentence. I'm still holding the end of it.

I've written this letter a hundred times. At the sink, in the car, right before sleep. Those versions are perfect. You'd have liked the perfect one. You always liked me best in theory.

What I actually have: your number, still not deleted. A mug nobody else is allowed to use. And the last real thing I said to you was a weather report.

Nobody tells you this part. It's not every day. It's Tuesdays, grocery stores, songs. Grief isn't a river. It's a tenant. Pays no rent. Doesn't leave.

I used to need you to hear me. Now I mostly need to have said it.

So here it is, where paper keeps it: you were real to me. That's the whole letter. The rest never fit anywhere else, so I built it a room.

No reply expected. That's the deal with paper.

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