“A Love Letter I Never Meant to Send”

I wrote it on a rainy Tuesday — not because Tuesdays are special, but because grief doesn’t check calendars. The city was grey. My heart was greyer. And you, well... you were everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The letter started as a journal entry. I didn’t mean to write to you. I didn’t even mean to remember you that day. But your name slipped onto the page like it always does — quiet, stubborn, familiar. Like it had been waiting for me.

“Dear you,” I wrote.

I couldn’t bring myself to say your name. Saying it made it real again — like calling you back from a dream I’d barely woken up from.

I wrote about the little things. The way you used to trace circles on my palm when you thought I was asleep. The coffee shop we went to every Sunday morning — how you always stole a bite of my muffin and called it “rent.” The stupid jokes that only made sense to us. And the way your eyes changed when you were about to say something important but chickened out at the last second.

I told you I hated how your toothbrush was still in my drawer. That I couldn't throw it out, even after all this time. I told you I missed the arguments — the passionate, pointless ones about which side of the bed was better, or whether or not pineapple belonged on pizza. (It doesn’t. You were wrong. But you made it taste like it belonged.)

I wrote until my fingers ached and my heart felt full — and then empty again.

I didn’t mean to send it. It wasn’t for you, really. It was for the version of you that lived in my memory — the one untouched by time, by doubt, by everything we never said aloud. It was for the “what if” version of us, preserved like dried flowers pressed between the pages of a book no one reads anymore.

But fate — or maybe the universe’s cruel sense of humor — had other plans.

I left the letter on my desk. Folded, sealed, unsent. I went to work, same routine, same blank stares at the same blinking cursor. When I came home, the envelope was gone.

And you... had replied.

Your handwriting on the return envelope was unmistakable. Slanted. Careful. Nervous, maybe.

Inside was a single page. Just one. But it felt heavier than all the silence between us.

“Dear you,

I didn’t know you still thought of me. I didn’t know I was still living in the quiet corners of your world.

You didn’t mean to send that letter. But maybe I was meant to read it.

Because I’ve been writing to you too. Not on paper, but in my mind. In half-finished texts I never sent. In conversations with friends where I pretend not to flinch when your name comes up. In songs I skip before they hurt too much.

You said I chickened out of saying important things. You were right.

So here’s the truth:

I loved you.

I still do.

I left, not because I stopped — but because I thought I was too broken to stay.

Because being loved by you felt like something I had to earn, and I didn’t think I ever could.

But your letter… it felt like coming home.

If this is too late, I’ll understand. If this is goodbye, I’ll fold your words into the pages of my heart and keep them safe.

But if there’s even a small space left for me in your world... I’d like to come back.

Not to who we were.

But maybe to who we still could be.”

Love,

Me.”

I must’ve read it a hundred times.

The paper smelled faintly of cedarwood and something else — maybe your cologne, or maybe my imagination.

The letter sits beside me now, next to a second envelope I’ve been too scared to open. You sent it yesterday. I don’t know if it’s a continuation, or an ending. Maybe both.

But for the first time in months, I don’t feel like I’m drowning in what we didn’t say.

We were two letters, lost in the mail.

Now... maybe we’re finding our way back.