A preface:
These letters were never meant to be read. They were written in the shadows of heartbreak, in the ache that follows unspoken truths and unanswered hopes. I have altered identifying details, but the emotions remain untouched, unsoftened, unedited. They are not confessions to a person; they are testimonies to a moment in my life when love and loss sharpened my pen more than intention ever could. I publish them because suffering, when given language, becomes something more than pain. It becomes recognition. It becomes kinship. It becomes the fire in which a self is forged. These letters belong to anyone who has loved without return, anyone who has carried an ache they could not put down, anyone who has walked toward the future while looking back.
These letters are my truth.
May they help illuminate yours.
Letter I: On the precipice of confession
And so here we stand, at the edge of a precipice, the ground behind us eroded and the air before us waiting to claim us. One step, and the fall will come. Our lives are shaped by the quiet verdicts of our actions, by the consequences of even the smallest cause. Even the faint stir of a butterfly’s wing can carry its weight across the years.
I am sorry you learned of my feelings from another’s lips. That truth was yours to hear from me. Life has shown me time and again that the search for the perfect moment often ends with the moment already gone. And so I write, whether welcome or not, because the thoughts within me echo too loudly to be left unspoken. Writing is the only way I know to give them shape and order.
It is clear that the person you see in me is not the one I strive to be. Perhaps you see only a poor reflection, or perhaps you have looked through entirely, past the face I present. Perhaps I, in believing I understood you, failed to see past the surface.
You told me, with kindness, that we could never be, that we are destined for failure. My mind does not accept this, and my soul believes it even less. Part of me longs to plead for a chance to prove it wrong, but I know that anything which must be begged for was never mine to claim.
Some days I wish I had never met you. Some days I wish I could forget. Most men, at some point, must learn to carry their feelings forward along life’s road, though the road is rough and seldom walked without wounds. I am no different, powerless over what I felt, powerless over how life moved around that feeling.
I know you do not feel the same. I know you may read this and find it misplaced. But how could I blame you, when unreturned passion is so often mistaken for something unprovoked? I cannot accuse you of leading me on, for it was never about what you did. It was always about you—the person you are, a soul wandering the same uncertain path I know too well.
If you take one thing from these words, let it be this: they are not a plea. I would not, even if I could, change what you feel. This is only the truth I believe you deserve.
It was never sudden. Even that one night, I did not yet feel this way. It began quietly, an ache that grew without my consent. Only recently did I truly understand it, perhaps even after you had. It was your laugh, your smile, the way the moment seemed to pause when you were near. It was the longing to see you again, the incompleteness of every moment without you. And most of all, it was the weight of it all arriving so close to the end.
All I wish for you is happiness. All I wish for you is peace. And if the cost is to carry this ache for the rest of my life, I will bear it.
Perhaps in another lifetime.
Letter II: Behind a smile
You asked me if I’d be okay. I lied and said yes. Perhaps one day that will be true, but for now the answer is no. I know this is not what you wish to hear, that you would rather I simply moved on. Believe me, there is nothing I would want more.
You told me we could never work out, and though you cloaked it in kindness, I would have preferred the cruelty of truth. I cannot seek warmth in the arms of lies. I do not blame you for feeling nothing in return, just as I hope you will not blame me for being unable to silence what I feel.
There is a part of me, the same part that paints the future with color and hope, that whispers this could still work, that your reasons are masks for fear. But most of me knows otherwise. Most of me knows, as plainly as one knows that fire burns and water floods, that you do not feel a single ounce of what I feel. You do not smile at my presence. You do not look at me with eagerness or hunger. You care, perhaps, but not in the way that sets the heart alight.
And yet, you have cursed me. I cannot see another face without being dragged back into the prison of yours. Each time I inch toward forgetting, your ghost ambushes me, reminding me that even my mind is not my own. My thoughts are hostages; my will, a casualty. I did not choose this intensity, especially when it is met with silence, but I cannot escape it. My mind is a wound shaped like you.
Perhaps I would have been happier had I never crossed your path. Perhaps if fate were kinder, we would have carried each other in our arms. But as it stands, I am left carrying only the ache of you; close enough to touch, yet forever out of reach.
Letter III: Exodus by my own becoming
Bittersweet endings are seldom a matter of celebration, and never as clean as other departures. I leave for “bigger, better things,” or so they say, yet the bitterness lingers longer than any sweetness it ever carried. I leave behind my friends, my life, and most of all, you.
There is no reason to feel such sorrow, I tell myself; unreciprocated love is said to bring harm only to the immature heart. But God forgive me; I am devastated. Part of me longed for you to want me selfishly enough to beg me to stay. And yet it was I who begged myself, every night, not to leave.
My soul cries out, for it will miss the alms you gave it when it was too far gone. They say I am in love with an idea, a figment of who you are. Perhaps they are right. But how can I believe it, when it was in your eyes, your smile, your very name, that I found myself again?
You told me we were incompatible. Perhaps it is so. Yet I would have preferred the wound of trying to the regret of silence. I know you spoke from kindness. It is who you are. You sought to shield me, but I wounded myself.
And still, you are the reason leaving feels like exile. Your eyes guard the gates of heaven; your smile is the ichor in my veins. That is what I abandon: a beautiful soul, misunderstood and scarred, who healed me even as they refused me.
So I go, carrying the ache of your absence, and my thoughts will forever remain captive to you.
Goodbye.
Letter IV: An Oddysey with Dusk at my back
I lie strung atop a mountain, beguiled and defiled, as the vultures of my own flesh consume my flayed and naked body. For the embers of the fire which once burned under the breath of your name now roar in mourning of its loss. The amber glow now paints the sky, and the shadow puppets dance to the songs you sang.
Today, my heart lies devastated from the injury of my mind. In its attempt to resolve the issue that plagued my life, it gnawed and tore my heart by isolating it from those who cared for it.
Letter V: Echoes
The echoes of her name linger in my heart, like her perfume lingered in the room that was graced by her presence. It reverberates, my mind demanding it to stop; my heart yearning for the remnants of sound now growing ever fainter. For even her name carries enough weight to crush me, but in that injury I find comfort, for a part of her still remains. And though I could never hold you, I get to hold that last bit of you forever. Forever blessed, forever you.
Love,
Your name still trembles in the air of my room. It does not belong to sound anymore; it hangs like a scent, invisible yet inescapable. I move through it as one moves through fog; aware of its damp touch, aware that it will not lift. I had thought time would erase you, but it only polished your absence until it gleamed.
At times I beg my thoughts for mercy. I command them: forget her, she is only a ghost. But they answer with rebellion; they conjure you in every reflection, in every half-sleep. I am not a man anymore, only the corridor through which your echo passes.
Even your silence has authority over me. It orders my heart to remain awake at impossible hours. I fear the morning because it proves I have survived another night without you, and that survival feels like betrayal.
I have tried to live elsewhere, in some cleaner corner of existence, but the wound follows. It has learned my address. It writes to me when you do not.
And yet, Love, or whatever name eternity has given you, I bless the pain. It is all that answers when I call. Were it to fade, I would too.
Yours, in ruin and remembrance.
Modern Meditations 
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