A Love Letter Never Sent

Eleanor sighed, resting her head towards the again of her chair. Outside, the night stretched with out a result in sight, stars blinking in silent witness to her unstated emotions. She imagined him underneath the same sky, possibly studying a e-book by using the usage of the dim moderate of his lantern, or out of place in notion the manner he frequently modified into. Did he ever think of her? Would he ever apprehend how deeply she cared?

She had regarded him in view that adolescence, their families pals within the small, quiet city where gossip traveled faster than the wind. They had performed together as youngsters, run barefoot via fields of wheat, laughed at nothing and the entirety. But time had a manner of converting topics. They grew older, their worlds transferring, increasing. He went to college within the town whilst she remained, tending to her circle of relatives’s bookstore, watching the seasons trade without him.

And then, one autumn afternoon, he again.

Eleanor had visible him through the store’s window, standing throughout the street, talking to a chum. He had modified—broader shoulders, sharper capabilities—but his smile changed into the equal. Warm. Effortless. It have become the identical smile that had as soon as been meant for her, but now, it grow to be shared with others. That changed into whilst she had started out writing the letter, when she located out her coronary heart had in no manner stopped looking forward to him.

She ran her fingers over the final traces:

James, I write this now not looking ahead to something in go returned, only to let loose the terms that have lived inner me for too long. I love you. I have for years. And likely I normally will.

A gust of wind rattled the windowpane, and he or she or he glanced toward it, 1/2-looking ahead to the area to react to her confession. But everything remained despite the fact that, as if retaining its breath on the aspect of her.

Folding the letter carefully, she slipped it into an envelope, sealing it with a wax stamp. She wrote his call on the front, allowing herself the small comfort of pretending, best for a 2nd, that it might reach him. But in place of putting it with the rest of the letters supposed for shipping, she opened the drawer of her table and tucked it away, some of the pages of an antique, forgotten novel.

She knew she might never send it. Not due to the fact she feared rejection—although likely she did—however due to the fact she understood that a few love testimonies were by no means meant to be written in ink. They existed in stolen glances, in laughter shared in the course of a room, within the quiet ache of knowing and no longer information all of sudden.

Years later, long after she had left the small town and built a existence some other place, she could go back to that letter. She would find it buried within the pages of a e-book she now not remembered owning. She might smile, going for walks her palms over the dwindled words, and surprise what might have been. And then, as gently as she had as soon as written it, she would close the e book, understanding that a few love letters are never despatched—not because they were in no way genuine, however because the coronary heart once in a while understands greater than the thoughts ever ought to.