Unsent

I found a letter today, its corners bent,

its ink like whispers bruised by time.

It slept beneath the weight

of years and books, untouched.

A letter never sent,

as if it had always known

it wouldn’t need to be.

The words, your words, my words.

They fluttered, half-alive,

crumpled ghosts of what I might have said.

My heart slowed to meet them,

hesitant, like a hand hovering over a door

you never meant to knock on.

What did I mean back then?

In that delicate spell of almost-love,

or the ache of holding back?

Maybe both, or neither.

Who can say now?

All I know is how the paper feels,

how it hums like something unfinished,

something too afraid to become real.

Would you have opened it?

Would you have known the way

I hesitated on every line?

Each unsent word

like a bird in the dark,

flitting and frantic,

but never finding the window.

I tuck it back

where it was meant to stay,

between the weight of things I’ll never read again.

This is how it ends, I think.

With quiet mercy I let it go,

let it slip back into the soft dark

of all things unfinished.