Letter That Came Too Late
I opened it like a wound
unwrapping itself,
the envelope soft from time,
your name trembling
in a handwriting I had learned to forget.
You said sorry.
In ink, not voice.
In past tense.
As if my years of silence
were a thing you could fold
into a paragraph.
I had already buried you
in the quiet way people bury the living,
not with dirt,
but with detachment.
I built a home without you.
Pictured love without your shape.
Learned how to forgive
the air.
Now you say
you didn’t know what you were doing.
That if you could go back,
But there is no going back
when the girl I was
waited on doorsteps
that never opened.
This apology
arrives like snow in summer,
too late to nourish,
too late to matter,
still somehow cold.
I want to scream
at the kindness of your words.
How dare they sound like healing
when I already healed
crooked.
You should have come
when it would’ve broken me.
Instead, you arrive
when I have already
taught my scars
how to speak.
I don’t know
whether to forgive you
or mourn you.
Maybe I’ll do both.
Maybe that’s what elegies are for,
grieving not just what we lost,
but what could never
be repaired in time.
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