Letters by Séverin

(A letter written as a sample, for a brief someone might bring. T. and M. are invented; the way of writing is mine. Yours would carry your names, and your one true thing.)

Dear T.,

I owe you an answer, and I've owed it for two winters now. You wrote three times. I answered once, late, with half my attention, the way you answer when you're afraid the full attention would show. Since then I've rehearsed this letter in kitchens, in traffic, at the sink, always with a good reason why this week wasn't the week. The reasons are true. They are also, added together, smaller than the silence they've grown.

Here is the thing I should have said back then: I was ashamed of how far behind I'd fallen with you. The longer it went, the more there was to explain, until the explaining stood taller than the whole friendship, and it was easier to carry the quiet than the account of it. That part was mine to fix. I didn't. I'm fixing it now, in the plainest sentence I own: I miss you. Not the memory of you, and not the version I keep in my good stories. You, as you are this winter, with everything that has happened since, which I want to hear from you and not guess.

You don't owe me a quick answer. You don't owe me any answer. But if there's a door here, even one that sticks, I'd like to come through it slower this time, and do more listening than explaining.

The kettle's on, on my side of the quiet.

Yours, M.

(Hear this one read aloud, in the voice a letter would arrive in: listen here)

Write to me: [email protected]. A letter for someone you name, written and read aloud.