Letters Never Sent

Dear Marcus,

I am writing this letter knowing you will never read it. That is what makes it honest. The things we say to people who cannot hear us are the truest things we ever say.

I wanted to tell you that the summer we spent in that falling-apart house by the coast was the only time in my life when I did not feel like I was performing. You never asked me to be anyone other than who I was, which was terrifying because I did not know who that was.

I still do not, if I am honest. But I am closer now than I was then. And I wanted you to know — wanted to tell the version of you that exists in my memory — that the silence between us was not indifference. It was the sound of someone learning to be honest.

I will not send this letter. But writing it was enough.