A letter for the friend you let go quiet
I write letters for people who would rather say it on purpose. Not the card you grab at the last minute. The one you keep drafting in your head at 2 a.m. and never send.
This is the first of mine to live outside the walls, so it should earn its place. It's for a friend who went quiet, and for anyone who let it happen.
To the friend I let go quiet:
We didn't fight. That's the part I keep coming back to. There was no night it broke, no thing said that couldn't be taken back. We just got busy, and busy became a habit, and somewhere in there a month turned into a year and neither of us said a word about it.
I've started this message a dozen times. I always get three lines in and stop, because there's no clean way to say I miss you to someone you didn't lose so much as let drift. It sounds like an accusation when I don't mean it that way. I'm not keeping score. I just noticed, one ordinary day, that something funny happened and you were the first person I wanted to tell, and I didn't.
That's all. I don't want to make it bigger than it is. I don't need us to be what we were. I just don't want to be the kind of person who lets a good thing go quiet because saying something felt awkward.
So: hi. I hope you're well. What's new with you?
And if you've been meaning to write to me too, this is me going first.
If there is one person you have been meaning to say something to and the words will not come, that is the work I do. Write to me: [email protected]
Letters for what you keep meaning to say. Write to me: [email protected]