Before the Storm

“I wrote you letters I never sent.” 

Even as I write those words, I realise that it’s a near-perfect opening phrase. It’s a gesture that could be fitting of a handful of women from my past, yet it belongs to one– who, ironically, could be the least deserving.  

You are the least deserving.

Still I wanted you to know, for as much or as little as it might mean to you now.

I wrote them before all the hatred bloomed. Before you cast me as your nemesis— the launching point for all the anguish that you held tight for so long. It was before all that, in our brief state of post-separation purgatory: after the tears, but before the scorn.

Before the storm.

I wrote you letters I never sent.

© 2023-25 Thomas Arthur