Letters I Never Sent

Letters I Never Sent

I kept the letters in a blue box under the bed, the kind that once held shoes and now held time. The cardboard had softened with years, the corners bent like tired elbows. Inside were envelopes of different sizes, none sealed, all addressed, none sent. I never meant to keep them this long. I never meant to keep them at all. Letters, I believed, were meant to travel. These stayed. They learned the shape of silence.

The first letter was written on a train. I remember the movement because my handwriting leaned forward, as if trying to arrive before I did. I was leaving a city that smelled of rain and bread, a city where you learned my habits before you learned my name. I wrote to tell you that leaving was not the same as forgetting. At the station, I watched people send words ahead of themselves, postcards sliding into the red mouths of mailboxes. I kept mine in my coat pocket until it grew warm. By the time I arrived, it felt dishonest to send it. Like a confession made too late.

The second letter was angrier. Anger, unlike love, believes in urgency. It presses hard on the pen, it tears paper if you let it. I accused you of things you never did and forgave you for things you did not ask forgiveness for. I wrote in short sentences. I crossed out entire paragraphs and rewrote them softer, then crossed those out too. When I finished, the page looked bruised. I read it once. I did not recognize myself in it. I placed it in the box as if placing a sharp object out of reach.

There were letters I wrote to you and letters I wrote to the version of you I invented later, after memory began editing itself. That version smiled more. That version listened. That version said the right thing at the wrong time, which is sometimes worse than saying nothing at all. Those letters were gentler. They asked questions instead of making statements. They ended without conclusions, as if waiting for answers.

I wrote one letter every winter. Winters make archivists of us all. The world shrinks, and you begin sorting what remains. In one winter letter, I described the way the light fell in my kitchen at four in the afternoon, how it made the table look borrowed. I told you about the cup with a crack I refused to throw away. I told you about the sound the radiator made at night, like someone knocking from another room. I was not writing to be understood. I was writing to be witnessed.

Another winter, I wrote a letter I never folded. I left it open on the table for days, as if air might edit it for me. That letter was about the body. About how absence is not empty, how it settles in shoulders and wrists, how it teaches you new ways to hold yourself. I wrote about how my hands had learned other gestures, how my name sounded different when spoken by people who did not know our history. Halfway through, I stopped. Some truths are accurate but unnecessary. I slid the paper into the box without rereading it.

There was a letter I wrote and never finished. It ended in the middle of a sentence, my pen hovering as if waiting for permission to continue. That day, a phone rang while I was writing. It was not you. It was never you. After that, the sentence felt untrue no matter how I tried to end it. I learned then that some words only exist in the moment they are written. Once interrupted, they do not return.

People ask why letters and not messages, why paper when screens forgive mistakes so easily. The truth is that paper remembers. It keeps the pressure of your hand, the pause before a difficult word. Paper does not allow you to pretend you did not mean it. When I wrote to you on paper, I was accountable to the page. That scared me more than your possible reply.

There were letters meant to be apologies. I practiced saying I am sorry without explaining myself. I practiced letting the sentence stand alone. Those letters were the hardest. I always wanted to add context, reasons, weather. I wanted to say I was tired, or young, or afraid. The page refused those excuses. It wanted only the apology. I was not ready to be that honest.

One letter almost escaped. I had written it carefully, neutrally, as if balance alone could protect me. I addressed the envelope, wrote the return address, held it in my hand on the way to work. At the mailbox, I paused. I imagined you reading it in a different life, one where timing had been kinder. I imagined your reply. That was enough to stop me. I tore the envelope open and slipped the letter back into the box, where it belonged.

As the years passed, the letters changed tone. The urgency softened. The questions stopped demanding answers. I began writing to tell you things without expecting anything back. In one letter, I told you I was happy. Not because of anyone else. Not as a performance. Just happy in the quiet way that does not need witnesses. I realized then that if I sent it, it would sound like a defense. So I kept it.

The box grew heavier, though paper weighs almost nothing. Sometimes I took it out and reread everything, in order, like chapters of a book written by someone learning how to leave. Other times I could not open it at all. Grief has seasons. Silence does too.

The last letter was written recently. I recognized my handwriting immediately. It was steadier. Less eager to please. I wrote to tell you that I no longer needed a response. That I had forgiven us both in different ways, for different things. I wrote to tell you that you were real, not a lesson, not a mistake, not a story I exaggerated to survive. Just a person I once loved, imperfectly, sincerely.

I folded that letter once. I did not reopen it. I placed it on top of the others. For the first time, I considered sending it. Not because I needed you to read it, but because I no longer feared what might happen if you did. I stood by the mailbox for a long time, feeling the weight of the envelope in my hand.

In the end, I brought it back inside.

The box remains under the bed. Sometimes I think the letters are waiting. Sometimes I think they are finished. Not all unsent things are unfinished. Some are complete precisely because they stayed where they were written.

If one day I no longer need the box, I will let it go. Until then, it stays. A small archive of what I felt, when I felt it, and who I was brave enough to be on paper, even if I was not brave enough to press send.