Unsent

do not write your name.

It stays folded in the dark

like a letter I will never send,

the paper of it thinning,

soft with absence.

Somewhere, perhaps,

you wake with your mouth full of another’s name,

or stand by a window

where winter is breaking apart

like a glass dropped slow to the pavement.

Perhaps your hands still speak

the language of my skin,

or perhaps they have learned

a new, strange dialect of touch.

Once, I would have sent this.

Slipped it through the red mouth of a letterbox,

or let it bloom blue on your screen,

each word a bead of water

held in the trembling net of your attention.

But the air between us is thick with quiet,

and love, like a candle left burning

in an empty room,

has melted to nothing but shape,

a hollow where light used to be.

I fold this poem back into silence,

place it beneath the weight of the years.

You will never read it.

And that is how I will know

it was written for you.