The Unsent

Tuesday. Nine months since the funeral.
She wakes to his absence differently now,
not the sharp gasp but a settling,
like snow accumulating on a roof
you trust will hold but check anyway.

She thinks of June Carruthers at grief group,
who writes her husband daily emails,
hits send, watches them bounce back
marked “undeliverable.” Says it helps.
But Lorraine prefers this: real paper,
real ink, the friction of pen on watermark,
the way cursive makes her hand
return to being young.

Morning light through lace curtains.
She’s chosen the desk by the window,
same spot where she paid bills
while he read the scores aloud.
In the drawer beneath last year’s Christmas cards,
the ones she never sent, addressed, stamped,
explaining how he’d gone peacefully,
no pain, just sleep.

She writes on hotel stationery,
the kind they don’t make anymore
(cream-colored, watermarked,
stolen from the Fairmont
on their thirtieth anniversary).

He’d pocketed a whole stack,
joking they’d use it for love letters
when they were eighty.

The pen hesitates:
“Dear Richard.” No.
“My darling.” Too much.
“Hi.” Too little.

She settles on his name alone:
“Richard,” then a comma that holds
thirty-seven years of morning coffee,
of knowing how he takes it
before he knows he wants it.

“I never told you about the morning
you had that presentation, the big one,
Detroit, how I ironed your shirt twice
because the first time my hands shook.

I knew if you lost that contract
we’d lose the house. You whistled
in the shower. I loved you most
for that whistling.”

She stops, crosses out everything after “twice.”
These confessions are too heavy
for hotel stationery, for widows
learning the weight of words never sent.

The coffee grows cold in his mug.
She still uses his, the one with the chip
on the handle from when he gestured
too broadly, explaining why the Cubs
would win this time, for sure this time.

She writes:
“The Cubs did win.
You missed it by two years.
I watched alone and cried
for all the wrong reasons.”

Beneath today’s letter,
seventeen others wait,
some dated, some not, none mailed.
The stack grows weekly in the drawer
beside his cufflinks, the ones
from their wedding she can’t bear to donate.

Each letter ends the same:
“All my love,” then her flourishing “L”
the way she signed birthday cards,
grocery lists, notes on the bathroom mirror
when she left early for her Tuesday shift.

Tonight she’ll make his favorite soup,
use both bowls, tell the empty chair
about the new people at grief group,
how June finally stopped writing emails,
said the bouncing back became
its own kind of haunting.

She’ll fold today’s letter carefully,
add it to the others,
the drawer growing fuller
with words that flutter
like moths in the dark.