"The Letter I Never Received"

There stood a bridge, a place we wondered. Twigs and leaves over the ridges, our feet close together. The nest was built with care—twigs gathered every day since we met. Under the Douglas Fir’s branches, I swore to you. I swore you’d never fall, never falter. Like love’s naked letter, you’d never stutter. Like a bird’s third song, your voice would be etched into the wind, unbroken. But even then, it hurt to look at you—like a promise I was bound to break.

I left you with nothing, though I had everything. The twigs and mud of our promises became stones. I became stone. Not clay, not fabric, but the kind of stone we used to stack and tumble, the kind we’d throw into rivers to watch them sink. But a nest isn’t meant for a stone. It was meant for birds—for you, a creature that sings, a creature that flies. And I would never have let you fly. You would have died in my stone-cold arms in the winter if I hadn’t pushed you out of the nest.

There I wonder, there I dream of a home we built but couldn’t keep. The bridge still stands, its ridges now weathered, the nest abandoned. Under the Douglas Fir’s leaves, I vowed you’d never die. But promises crack like twigs underfoot. The letter I never sent lingers in my hands—a ghost of what I meant to say. I am a lot of things, and I am nothing. A bridge, a stone, a broken bird. And you? You are still the wind, the voice, the promise I couldn’t hold.

✏️ Authors Note:

This piece began as a class assignment, but quickly became something much more personal — a conversation I never got to have. Though it’s written in the other person’s voice, it’s about multiple friendships, layered with memories I kept circling back to. I chose the prose poem form because it mirrors how memory works: fluid, nonlinear, and emotionally chaotic beneath a contained surface.

Every image carries weight — twigs, stones, bridges — each shifting meaning with every reread. I wanted it to feel raw and unfinished, like a letter unsent. The prose poem, as Charles Simic said, is meant to be read again. That’s what I hoped for: a slow unfolding. A transformation. A quiet act of letting go.

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