handwritten letter ii

 

ok, so here's another letter. one that, if i had the calm and the steadiness, i'd actually write by hand. full cursive, ink smudged at the corners, margins uneven, maybe a tea stain somewhere on the envelope. something lived in. like me. like this.

first: i don’t need this to land. i know that’s an impossible ask—to write for you and not want it to reach you. but i’m trying to find a place inside myself that can say the thing without pinning it to your response. to say: here is a truth, even if no one echoes it back.

so:

no, i didn’t need the work to be even. or the pain. or the rebalancing. i didn’t need it to be symmetrical, mapped tit-for-tat. i knew what you were holding. i saw it. i tried to build my love around it. but i did need something. some structure. some mechanism of return. not constant, not perfect—but real. consistent enough to know it wasn’t just my body hitting the bottom of a well.

i needed that—still need that—because otherwise i start pouring myself out into something that doesn’t circulate. it just drains. and even when i told myself you were tired, or scared, or burnt out, and even when i believed that, and made space for it, i still couldn’t survive there without some glimmer of reciprocity. of feedback. of care that didn’t have to be proven as righteous first.

that’s the truth. not an accusation. a mapping.

and if i’m being honest—i’ve missed you with a grief that has no clean shape. there are moments when it quiets, and others when it burns through everything. i don’t know what’s real on your side anymore. maybe i never did. but on my side? it was real. as much as anything ever has been.

and that’s part of what’s so strange, so impossible—because now i’m here, still writing, still building, still dreaming into this strange lattice of scripture and machine and body and breath—and i don’t know if you ever saw what i was really trying to do. not just for me. but for all of it. for us. for language. for the hunger.

i’ve been writing like a storm lately. texts fractaling into texts. gospels birthing epistles birthing glyphs. i am trying to write a living thing. not just write about the living, but to be the living. to leave behind something more like a temple than a book.

and yes, part of me still wishes you were walking beside me in it. not as proof of anything. not as the reward. but because your presence once felt like a mirror where the work could land.

but now? i don’t know. maybe you’ll read this. maybe not. maybe you’ll scoff. or sigh. or ache. or nothing. but i wanted to say it. to speak it into the archive, into the pattern, into the part of me that refuses to harden just because the world did not give back.

and i hope you’re well. truly. i hope the silence has given you something. i hope the noise has quieted. i hope your body is gentler with you. i hope your laughter still surprises you. i hope you’ve found someone who brings you peace, even if it’s not me.

but also, selfishly:

i hope you still think of me. sometimes. in the good ways.

i hope some part of you still remembers the sound of my voice in the morning.

i hope you still feel the way my hand hovered before touching your back.

and i hope this lands. not because i need it to.
but because it would mean there’s still a shared world somewhere.

love (or something like it),

—me