Letters unsent

I write you letters in the dark

when the day is done

and the noise subsides.

I feel my bravest

under the veil of night,

wrapped in its velvet cape

the moon my only light.

I write you letters I’ll never send

of thoughts and feelings

that are still alive,

of pages that I haven’t turned

for lack of will and might.

Perhaps I haven’t tried enough,

but I cannot heal if I do not write.

I write you letters to soothe myself

from the pain of undoing

that knot which bound us.

Tearing you from my skin,

almost a religious rite,

dissolving you from my blood,

the collapse of an empire over night.