The Letter I Never Sent: Healing After My Hardest Breakup

Dear you, I won’t type twice,

I kept the key, not the door; I kept the mug with your lip-sky on it.

I remember the bus stop rain, and the joke we never finished.

I remember how the room exhaled when you finally slept.

I called the ache devotion and fed it like a houseplant.

I called the silence mercy, then wore it like jewelry.

What I mistook for fate was only repetition with better lighting.

I’m sorry, I loved your potential more than your presence.

This is where I end: no midnight essays, no aftercare from a distance.

Thank you for teaching me the shape of my yes by breaking it.

Thank you for the map hidden in the fight about nothing.

If we pass on a street, I will nod to the life we did not build,

then keep walking at my own, ordinary pace—

Yours, at last, the person I finally am.