I wrote the letter on a train, the kind that rocks you into honesty. The tracks stitched fields together while I tried to stitch sentences.

“Hello,” I began, like we had never spoken and like we were still in the middle of a conversation that never ended.

I wrote about the bookstore where we used to meet in the travel aisle, about the cafe with the wobbly table, about the map we bought and never used. I wrote the truth I had avoided: that endings are not failures, they’re just the shape that some stories take.

A child down the car laughed. A couple shared headphones. A conductor clipped tickets with a silver tool that clicked like punctuation. I folded the letter, then unfolded it, reading the lines the way you read a scar: aware it will fade but never vanish.

At my stop, I tucked the paper into a pocket in my bag. I thought about stamps and addresses, about sending and not sending, about how forgiveness sometimes doesn’t need an audience.

The letter is still in the pocket. Sometimes I carry it to new places, a souvenir from a town that no longer exists. I don’t think I’ll mail it. The person who needed it most has already read it: me.