Love Letters I Never Sent

I keep a folder of letters I never sent. Some are three lines long. One runs to eleven pages and ends mid-sentence, because the person I was writing to called before I could finish, and by then the letter no longer needed to exist.

These are a few fragments from that folder, edited only enough to protect the people in them.

To the girl at the bus stop, 2014

You were reading the same book as me, the same edition, and you were on the same chapter. I wanted to ask whether you’d cried yet. I didn’t. I think about you every time I see that cover.

To my father, unfinished

I learned to drive in your car, and I still check the mirrors the way you did, twice and then once more. I don’t know how to tell you that this is how I love you now: in small habits, borrowed and kept.

Most of the love we feel never gets sent. It doesn’t disappear. It just changes address.

To the house on Alder Street

Thank you for the window seat, the bad radiator and the year I was happy without noticing. I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye to the kitchen.

If you have a folder like this, keep it. You don’t have to send any of it. Sometimes writing the letter is the whole point.