What We Set Down

Letter One

Dear N.,

I’m writing this on the bus because if I wait until I’m home, I won’t. There’s something about motion that makes honesty easier. You can blame the road if the words wobble.

I found your spare key today. It was taped inside the old cookbook, right where you said it wouldn’t be. I laughed out loud in the kitchen, which felt strange, like laughing in a closed room after the air’s already gone stale.

I didn’t use the key. I just wanted to know it was real.

You asked, last time we spoke, why I stopped answering. I’ve been rehearsing answers that sound calm and reasonable, but they all feel like costumes. The truth is smaller. I didn’t know how to talk to you without hoping you’d tell me to come back. And I didn’t trust myself with that hope. I’ve learned I’m good at leaving before I have to decide whether I can stay.

The bus is slowing. My stop is next.

I don’t know if you’ll write back. I’m not even sure I want you to. But I wanted you to know I didn’t disappear. I just went quiet.

— K.

Letter Two

K.,

You always did your thinking in transit. Trains, sidewalks, grocery aisles. I used to say you were allergic to stillness. I guess I was wrong. Stillness came for both of us in the end.

I found your letter folded into my jacket pocket. You must have slipped it in when you dropped off the box of books. I didn’t notice until later, which feels like a metaphor I won’t overwork.

You didn’t use the key. That’s good. I changed the locks anyway, and I hated myself for it. Not because you’d done anything wrong, but because it felt like admitting something was over before I was ready to say it out loud.

You say the truth is small. I don’t think so. I think it’s heavy, and that’s why we keep setting it down. Like the night my dad was in the hospital and you said you couldn’t come because you didn’t trust yourself to sit still. I told you I understood. I did. I still do. I just never stopped noticing.

If you’re afraid I’d tell you to come back, you’re right. I would have. I still might. That doesn’t mean I think you should.

Write again if you want. Don’t if you don’t. I’m trying to learn the difference between waiting and holding the door open.

— N.

Letter Three

N.,

I read your letter twice and then burned toast because I forgot it was in the oven. You’d enjoy that.

I keep wanting to explain myself better, as if clarity could retroactively make things kinder. The truth is, I left because loving you started to feel like living in a room where the lights were always on. Nothing was wrong, exactly. I was just tired in a way sleep didn’t fix.

And because sometimes, when you needed me in the dark, I chose motion instead.

That sounds unfair. Maybe it is. You loved me the way people are told they should. I loved you like I was bracing for weather. I thought if I stayed moving, nothing could catch me. I was wrong about that.

I don’t want you to wait. I don’t want to be the reason your life pauses on a comma.

But I do want you to know this — when I imagine a future where we never speak again, it doesn’t feel clean. It feels like skipping the last page of a book I cared about.

I don’t know what that means yet.

— K.

Letter Four

K.,

I didn’t burn the toast, but I did forget to lock the door last night. Woke up at three convinced something terrible had happened. Nothing had. The house was quiet. Too quiet, maybe, but intact.

I’ve been thinking about that room you mentioned. The lights. I wonder if I kept them on because I was afraid of what we’d see in the dark. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to dim them without turning them off completely. I think I was trying to make things safe for you without realizing safety can feel like pressure.

I went through the cookbook today. Found the tape, the outline where the key used to be. I left it there. Some habits don’t need to be corrected.

I’m not waiting. I’m living. Some days that looks impressive. Some days it looks like cereal for dinner and an early bedtime. Both are allowed.

If this is the last letter, thank you for writing it. If it isn’t, thank you in advance for the next one. I’m not holding the door, but I’m not barricading it either.

Take care of yourself in motion or at rest. You always did both better than you think.

— N.

Letter Five

N.,

I told myself I wouldn’t write again unless something changed. Then I realized things change quietly all the time, and I’m just bad at noticing.

I moved the chair by the window. That’s it. That’s the big event. But the light hits the wall differently now, and in the afternoon it makes a shape that looks like a doorway if you squint. I don’t read too much into it. I just sit there longer than I used to.

I keep thinking about what you said, about not barricading the door. I liked that. It felt realistic. I’m trying to do the same thing with my days. Not throwing them open, not sealing them shut. Just letting them be what they are. Including the days I remember all the times I wasn’t where I should have been.

I went back to the bus route last week, the one I used to take when I wrote you that first letter. I didn’t have anything to say this time. I just rode it to the end and back. Motion without confession. It felt different. Less like running.

If we ever meet again, I don’t want it to be dramatic. I don’t want apologies stacked like furniture we have to move around. I think I’d like to talk about ordinary things. What we’ve been eating. What keeps us up at night now.

You don’t have to answer this. I know I keep saying that. I mean it more each time.

— K.

Letter Six

K.,

I smiled at the part about the chair. I moved the table last month. Just a few inches. The room breathes better now. Funny how we both pretend these things are accidental.

I like the idea of ordinary conversation. I’m tired of conversations that feel like negotiations with the past. We both know what happened. We both survived it. That feels like enough to start from.

I’d rather tell you that I’ve started buying bread from the place on the corner, the one we never went into because it always looked closed. Turns out it wasn’t. Turns out we were just wrong about it.

Nothing grand has happened here either. I’ve learned the sound the house makes at night. I no longer check every room when I wake up. That feels like progress, even if it’s the quiet kind.

If we meet, we’ll keep it simple. Coffee. Daylight. An easy exit for both of us. Not because we expect to run, but because it’s good to know you can.

Let me know if that sounds right to you. No urgency. I’m not going anywhere in a rush.

— N.

Letter Seven

N.,

Coffee in daylight sounds right. An easy exit sounds kinder than it used to. I’m surprised by how steady that makes me feel.

I don’t need this to mean anything more than what it is. I don’t need it to fix the past or outline the future. I just want to see you as you are now, and let you see me without the weight of who we were supposed to be. Without pretending we didn’t hurt each other by accident.

I’m free Thursday morning. If that doesn’t work, say so. If it does, say that instead. I’m learning to trust simple answers.

No matter what happens next, I’m glad we kept writing. Some stories don’t end. They just stop being lonely.

— K.

Letter Eight

Dear N.,

Thursday is good.

I wrote that three times and erased it twice because it sounded either too eager or too flat. I’m trying to accept that “good” can just mean good.

I’ve been thinking about that hospital night again. Not in a punishing way. More like how you keep touching a sore tooth to check if it still hurts. It does, but differently now. Quieter. Less accusatory.

I don’t remember what I did instead of coming. I know it involved moving. A bus. A long walk. Something that felt productive and was actually just avoidance in better lighting.

I’m trying to forgive that version of me. She thought she was being careful. She was mostly being scared.

See you Thursday.

— K.

Letter Nine

K.,

“Good” is perfect. It doesn’t try to negotiate with the future.

I’m glad you brought up that night. Not because I wanted an apology. I’ve had years to build my own. I think I just wanted it acknowledged as real. As something that happened between us, not something I imagined.

I didn’t tell you then, but I wasn’t even afraid that night. Not really. I was tired. I wanted to sit next to someone who knew my silences. That was the part that hurt. Missing you in a room where you were supposed to be.

I’ve forgiven that version of you, too. He was trying to survive himself.

Thursday.

— N.

Letter Ten

N.,

I keep wondering if we’ll recognize each other immediately. Not physically — I know what time does. I mean emotionally. Whether we’ll speak in the same register. Whether our jokes will still land. Whether the pauses will feel familiar or foreign.

I practiced ordering coffee today. That sounds ridiculous. I stood in line and rehearsed like it was a speech. I’m out of practice being casual with you.

I don’t want this meeting to become a referendum on everything we were. I want it to be one hour of present tense.

If it isn’t, I’ll try not to panic.

— K.

Letter Eleven

K.,

I’ve been practicing, too. Not the coffee. The not-overthinking.

I made a list in my head of things I’m not going to say. It’s long. It includes- “I missed you more than I admitted.” “I dated people who were easier than you.” “I still know your favorite order.”

I won’t say any of it. Not because it isn’t true. Because it doesn’t belong to who we are now.

One hour of present tense sounds good.

— N.

Letter Twelve

Dear N.,

We did better than I expected.

I’m writing this before I overanalyze every sentence we exchanged. Before I decide that one look meant something and another meant nothing.

You laughed the same way. Softer now, maybe. Or maybe I’m just older.

I liked that we didn’t rush. That we didn’t try to solve anything. That we talked about bread and weather and sleep and nothing that required bravery.

I walked home instead of taking the bus. That felt like progress.

— K.

Letter Thirteen

K.,

I walked, too.

Not in the same direction, obviously. But with the same impulse, I think. To let the meeting settle before enclosing it in interpretation.

You felt… real. Not idealized. Not frozen in memory. Real and ongoing and slightly tired in a way I recognized.

That was a gift.

— N.

Letter Fourteen

N.,

Do you ever think about how close we came to becoming strangers?

Not enemies. Not tragic. Just… two people who once knew everything and then knew nothing.

That possibility scares me more than the breakup ever did.

I’m grateful we missed it.

— K.

Letter Fifteen

K.,

Yes.

I think about it the way people think about near accidents. The car that almost hit you. The step you almost missed. The version of life that kept going without you noticing.

We didn’t choose each other forever.

But we chose not to erase each other.

That feels like something.

— N.

Letter Sixteen

Dear N.,

I don’t know what we’re becoming.

Friends feels too small. Lovers feels dishonest. “People who once loved each other and now meet for coffee” feels accurate but impractical.

Maybe we’re just… witnesses.

People who saw each other at close range and survived it.

— K.

Letter Seventeen

K.,

Witnesses is good.

So is- people who learned.

You taught me how to stay when things are uncomfortable.

I taught you how to leave without disappearing.

Neither of us was perfect at it.

We got better.

— N.

Letter Eighteen

N.,

Sometimes I imagine an alternate timeline where I stayed that night. Where I sat in the plastic chair and held your hand and learned how to be still with fear.

I don’t know if that version of us would’ve lasted.

But I know she wouldn’t have run.

I’m becoming her now.

Late, but sincerely.

— K.

Letter Nineteen

K.,

I don’t resent the timeline we got.

It taught me how to hold disappointment without turning it into bitterness. How to love someone without demanding they become braver on my schedule.

You’re braver now.

So am I.

Timing is strange.

— N.

Letter Twenty

Dear N.,

I don’t need us to become anything official.

I don’t need declarations or plans.

I like this- Letters. Coffee. Honesty that doesn’t bruise.

If one day this changes, I’ll tell you.

If it doesn’t, I’ll be grateful.

— K.

Letter Twenty-One

K.,

Same.

Some people are chapters.

Some are footnotes.

You’re a margin note I keep rereading.

Not because I’m stuck.

Because it still makes sense.

— N.