The Love Letters I Wrote for a Future I Never Had

Title: The Love Letters I Wrote for a Future I Never Had

Genre: Romance / Poets / Fiction

Structure: Letter-style Format

Theme: Things You Can’t Say Out Loud

Letter One

To the life I thought we’d build together,

I was going through my desk today, trying to finally throw out all the things I no longer needed, and I found the letters. These letters — unsent, unspoken — are little ghosts of a life that never came true.

This first one was written the night after our second trip to the mountains. You had just fallen asleep, your hand curled under your cheek like a child, and I stayed awake, writing under the soft hum of silence. I wrote about how I hoped, one day, we would live in a small house with too many bookshelves and coffee stains on every table. I imagined lazy Sunday mornings when we wouldn’t even need words — just you, barefoot, making eggs, and me, watching you like a secret I was lucky enough to keep.

I wrote about the way your eyes crinkled when you laughed, and how it made me believe in things again — not miracles, but something close. I wrote that I was afraid. Not of you. Never of you. But of how much I was starting to need a future that wasn’t promised.

I never sent it. You were still here. I didn’t want to ruin the moment with forever-talk.

Letter Two

To the version of you that stayed,

You would have loved the way the light hit the window this morning. It was soft — like a memory returning gently, unannounced. I wrote this letter after our first fight. You stormed out, but came back with tulips and apologies. That night, I sat on the floor of the bathroom, my knees pulled to my chest, and I wrote this.

I wrote that love wasn’t supposed to be perfect. That maybe real love shows up in the arguments we survive, the truths we admit even when they tremble out of us. I told you, in these pages, that I didn’t care about always being right — I just wanted to be real, and safe, and held. I wrote that I would never leave when things got ugly. I wrote that you were worth the hard days, too.

But you never got to read that. Because we got better. For a little while.

Now, I wonder if maybe I should’ve read it to you anyway. Maybe we needed the reminder.

Letter Three

To the child we never had,

You weren’t real. Not in the way that people are. But in the quiet corners of my mind, you were as real as the moonlight spilling across our bedroom floor. I wrote this one in spring. I was sitting in the garden, watching bees flit between the lavender, and I imagined naming you after something simple, something pure. Maybe Lily. Or Sage.

I wrote that I hoped you’d inherit your father’s patience and my stubbornness — or maybe the reverse. I wrote that we would read you poetry before bed and that you'd grow up thinking love was the most natural language.

I didn’t know, then, that your father and I were already starting to drift like ships in fog. That the silences between us would grow too wide to cross.

But this letter — it still makes me cry. Not for what I lost, but for what I never even got to hold.

Letter Four

To the goodbye I couldn’t say,

This one’s the hardest. I wrote it the night after you left. You didn’t take all your things, just the essentials, as if even your absence didn’t want to be cruel.

I sat on the bed for hours, tracing the shape your body made in the sheets, as if memory could warm what you left cold. I wrote about how I wished I had fought harder. Not with words, but with truth. I wrote that I didn’t hate you. That I couldn’t. That love doesn’t disappear just because it stops being shared.

I told you I’d be okay — but that was a lie. Not because I wouldn’t heal, but because I didn’t want to. Not yet. Grief was the last way I could still feel connected to you.

This letter never had an address. Only a tremble in the paper from where my tears hit the ink.

Letter Five

To myself, finally,

You’ve held onto these too long, haven’t you? Every unsent letter was a way to avoid the truth — that you wrote more to preserve what was dying than to celebrate what was alive. You were in love, yes. But you were also afraid. You wanted so badly for love to be enough, but you were writing a future like a script, not realizing that real life doesn’t follow your pen.

This last letter is for you. Not the version waiting at the window. Not the one re-reading old messages at 2 a.m. But the you who is learning to let go. Who is starting to understand that love doesn’t always end in holding hands at the finish line. Sometimes, it ends in silent rooms and unopened envelopes.

But even then — it was love. And you were brave enough to feel it all.

So keep these letters. Not because they will bring back the future you lost. But because they remind you that you loved. Deeply. Fully. Silently.

And that matters.

Love,

You