“The Letter That Was Never Meant to Be Sent”

Eliah was a boy of precision.

He kept his books alphabetized, his socks color-coded, and his future planned to the hour. He knew by fifteen that he’d be a writer, that he’d live by the sea, and that he’d marry Anya—the girl who sat two rows ahead of him in school and always smelled faintly of sun-warmed paper and vanilla chapstick.

Anya was unpredictable. Her laughter came in bursts. Her moods shifted with the wind. She doodled on test papers and wrote poems on the margins of her math book. Eliah didn’t understand half of what she said, but he understood the way she made him feel—like the world was more than order and rules.

He never spoke to her about it. Not once.

He was sure he'd ruin it.

Instead, he collected pieces of her. A quote she once read aloud. A paper crane she left behind on a bench. The way she bit her lip when she was thinking. Little fragments, pressed between the pages of his carefully organized life.

When Eliah was twenty, he finally wrote her a letter.

It was a confession—ten years in the making. It said everything: how her laugh cracked open the silence in his world. How he still remembered the time she dropped her pencil and their hands touched and his heart stuttered like a faulty machine. How he wanted to build a life with her, somewhere quiet, with rain and books and sleepy coffee mornings.

He signed it:

"Forever yours, if you’ll have me."

He planned to give it to her on her birthday. He even tucked it inside a worn copy of Wuthering Heights—her favorite book. But that day came and went. Something felt… off. The timing wasn’t right. She was distracted, talking about internships, about moving to Karachi, about futures that no longer included the sleepy town they’d grown up in.

Eliah waited. A week. A month.

He kept the book on his shelf, the letter nestled inside. Waiting for perfection.

But the world does not wait for perfect.

Anya left the city without warning. A sudden opportunity. All Eliah saw was a status update: a blurry picture of a high-rise apartment and a caption that said, “New chapter.” He stared at his screen for a long time. Then, slowly, he took the book off the shelf, opened it, glanced at the letter, and placed it back—Wuthering Heights, spine facing out, tucked between books he no longer read.

He never sent the letter. Never called.

Years passed.

Eliah became a writer, just like he’d planned. He lived by the sea, just like he’d dreamed. His home smelled of ink and salt. He had success, signings, fans. But no Anya. Just ghosts of almosts and echoes of what-ifs.

One rainy evening, a girl entered the small bookstore Eliah now owned. She looked no older than twenty, with rain in her hair and a book in her hands.

“Excuse me,” she said, holding it up. “I bought this earlier. I found something inside.”

It was Wuthering Heights.

Inside was the letter. Still folded. The ink slightly smudged, the paper yellowing at the edges—but the words were there. As raw, as hopeful, as unfinished as the day he wrote them.

The girl added softly, “I just thought whoever wrote this… maybe they were looking for an ending.”

Eliah looked at her, then at the letter in his hands. For a long time, he didn’t speak.

“No,” he said finally, voice barely above a whisper.

“I think it was never meant to end the way it was supposed to.”

He gently folded the letter, placed it back inside the book, and handed it to her.

“Keep it,” he said. “Or leave it somewhere else. Maybe it will find the right hands one day.”

The girl smiled, nodded, and walked back into the rain.

Eliah stood in the doorway, watching her disappear into the mist. He didn’t feel sadness. Not anymore. Only the soft ache of things left unsaid, and the quiet peace of letting go.

Some stories don’t get their ending.

Some letters are never meant to be sent.

But even in silence, they still speak.