Dear Don,
It was cold when I woke up today. I have been sleeping on the floor for the past summer, something my mother will never understand when I tell her my bed is too soft and it is no place to rest my hard heart. I went to a store yesterday and with a test sharpie I wrote “Don is an asshole. Love, Sam” on the darling little side panel. I hope they take it down. My hair has grown. I just thought you might want to know that. I whispered “Happy Birthday” to you, but I do not think you heard it.
Love, Sam
Dear Don,
I have stopped incorporating your name into everything. You are not my morning. I realise that. Dawn is something I avoid now, and the afternoon greets me wearily as I cry and curse the day. I sit often, most of the day I shall be found in my chair. It has become repetitive, this cycle of sitting. I sit as I write this to you. I hope you are on your own two feet.
Love, Sam
Dear Don,
I feel like a sailor’s wife. Come back, come back from the sea, I say and in reply I hear the wind’s harsh tremble against my house and the waves threatening to push you further into the ocean where you could become lost. I tuck myself away in the crevice of your compass and point you home.
Love, Sam
Dear Don,
These piano keys remind me of you. I played them for you, remember? And you sat next to me. You watched my fingers mess up because I was too busy looking at you. I had a dream the other day. You were proud of me because I could play, and you were beaming. I felt so happy. But that was a dream, and sleep only lasts for so long. I play now, but the chords sound distorted and off. The lullaby sounds like a dirge. I keep playing, though. I am trying.
Love, Sam
Dear Don,
I am pathetic. For even writing a letter I am not going to deliver to you, nor send it off. There is something maddening about this, the fact that these words are meant for you but never will you read them. They come back to haunt me, you see. I have written you hundreds of letters like this one.
I am delaying, I know. This is not a “take me back” letter, nor is it a hate letter, and God knows how many I have written and torn up of that variety. A letter to simply state that I think of you, and often. I still wear the locket you gave me, and sometimes I like to pretend that it is your heart that I am stringing along my neck, as if I still have it. I miss you, dearly. I hope you live in happiness now.
Love, Sam
