Unsent [Narrated]

Flashback Friday is my way of looking back through the archive — pulling out a piece I’ve shared before and exploring what’s grown from it. Sometimes that means revisiting a poem or essay with fresh eyes. Sometimes it means tracing the thread forward into a new story.

Three summers ago, I wrote a poem called Hasta Siempre for my friend Sharon. It began as a playful fundraising idea, but it turned into something larger: a way of naming friendship before it slips into silence. That poem became the first in a series I hadn’t planned, and eventually it opened the door to this story, Unsent.

This week’s Flashback Friday is about that progression — from poem to story, from gesture to silence, from words written in time to those left unsent.

Unsent

It began as a joke, really—one of those ideas you toss into a board meeting to fill the silence.
“I’ll write poems on commission,” I said. “You sponsor a young woman into the program, and I’ll give you a poem back.”

There was laughter, the kind meant to close a subject. But then Sharon leaned in, eyes narrowing, as if testing weight in her hand.
“Alright,” she said. “Write one for me. About us.”

I nodded.

That night, I sat at my desk with a clean sheet of paper, and the page carried only weight. Twenty-five years of friendship pressed against it, refusing to fit into neat stanzas.

The first lines came plain, almost too simple: how friendships begin in the places where we learn, where we work, where we play. I wrote about seeds scattered in soil, some finding purchase, others fading. About respect and laughter—the nutrients and sunlight that make a bond grow.

Not all friendships last. Many falter as people change, as paths diverge. A few endure. Ours was one of those rare ones—timeless, durable, dependable.

When I read it back, it felt almost too bare. But it was true. I gave it a title in Spanish—Hasta Siempre, “until forever.” It felt too grand for such spare lines, but Sharon said it fit.

I sent it to her with a brief note: Here’s my first attempt. Don’t expect Shakespeare. Think of it more like scaffolding—the words only hold up what’s already there.

Her reply came quickly:
“This is perfect. You’ve said what I never found the words for.”

I left the screen open. The kettle hissed, cooled. The words stayed.

The second request came from someone I barely knew. A woman who had heard about the fundraiser through a friend of a friend. Her email was short, almost abrupt:

“Could you write something for my best friend? She’s in hospice. Cancer. It would mean a lot.”

I read it again. The cursor blinked.

I opened a new page, but the words wouldn’t come. Everything I tried sounded brittle, like phrases plucked from a sympathy card.

Eventually, I wrote about presence. About the way a hand resting quietly in another’s can speak louder than words left unsaid. About laughter remembered not for the punchline, but the way it shook the room.

I turned the pen in my fingers until the cap clicked. I sent it.

A week later, another email arrived:
“She cried when I read it aloud. Thank you.”

The inbox filled. I kept writing. Another sponsorship covered; I ticked the ledger in the margin.

The third request was the hardest to read.
A father wrote:

“My daughter won’t speak to me. I’ve tried everything. Could you write a poem that might reach her?”

The star stayed beside the subject line. Drafts stacked—each beginning “Dear—” and stopping there.

When I finally sat down, I wrote about distance. Not the kind measured in miles, but in the ache of conversations cut short, or never begun. I wrote about the way anger hardens, how it can feel safer than hope.

Halfway through, I stopped. The daughter in the poem blurred into my own brother, or maybe my mother—relationships I’d let thin to a thread, convinced there would always be time to repair them later.

I finished the poem, pared to the bone. No promises, no easy redemption. Just an opening.

I never learned if the daughter read it. But after I sent it, I printed a copy for myself. I folded it once, twice, and slipped it into the drawer where my own unsent letters lived.

The next request arrived on heavy cream paper, handwritten in a looping script.

“I’d like a poem for a friend I no longer speak to. We parted badly. I don’t want reconciliation, just recognition that it once mattered.”

Most people asked for sunlight; here was someone asking for shadow.

I tried to begin with gratitude, but the lines felt dishonest, as if kindness alone could rewrite the ending. So I shifted—words clipped short, images pared down to their sharp edges:
two voices once in rhythm / now scattered notes
a table set for two / plates stacked away untouched

It wasn’t elegy. It wasn’t praise. It was something in between—an acknowledgment of a fracture without sealing it over.

That night, I thought of a friendship of my own that had ended abruptly, a door slammed so hard it still rattled in memory. I’d never tried to put it into words. Until now.

After the fourth poem, I couldn’t write for anyone else. Each new request sat unopened in my inbox, waiting, while I circled my desk like a wary animal.

The truth was simple: I had run out of other people’s stories to hide behind.

There was a name I hadn’t spoken in years. A friend—once the closest thing I had to family in those restless years. She knew the fault lines in me better than I did. We had carried each other through late nights and small disasters, speaking in shorthand only we understood. And then, somewhere along the way, we let the silence do the talking for us.

Not anger—erosion.

One night, long after midnight, I pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. Not for the fundraiser, not for anyone else. Just for her.

The words came raw, stripped of metaphor. No scaffolding, no balance. Just the truth: I missed her. I should have said so sooner.

When I finished, I folded the letter and for a long time I held it there, the crease sharp against my thumb. As if the act of folding carried its own confession.

I didn’t know if I would ever send it. But for the first time, the poem felt like it was for me.

One evening, I left my condo carrying the poem, now sealed in a plain white envelope. Her name written carefully, my hand slower than it should have been.

The Open Air Post Office stood solid on the corner, arches cut into its stone wall. Two brass-lipped mailboxes were set into the facade, their metal dulled from decades of use.

I walked there as if in a dream, the envelope warm in my pocket. I stopped beneath the light, listening to the hum overhead.

I imagined the sound of it landing in her hallway, the soft thud on the mat.

I stood there a long time, facing the wall. My hand hovered over the slot. The metal cooled my fingertips. Almost.

Instead, I turned back.

Not tonight, I told myself. Not yet.

The hospice smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender. Curtains drawn low, machines clicking softly, keeping their low electric hum.

My friend’s daughter had written to me weeks before, asking if I could shape something she no longer had words for. Now her mother lay propped against pillows, her breath shallow, her eyes half closed.

I unfolded the page with hands that shook more than I expected. The poem was simple—presence, memory, laughter that lingers after the sound fades. Nothing ornate. Just words I hoped could hold steady in the silence.

Halfway through, her lips curved into the faintest smile. At the last line, her hand moved, barely, to rest on her daughter’s.

A gesture that didn’t ask. I steadied.

I left the room shaken, the poem folded back into its envelope, its edge creased where her fingers had rested.

Back home, the other envelope — the one still waiting in the drawer — pressed sharper against my thoughts than ever.

The morning after, I found myself at the desk again. I thought of my friend’s hand brushing mine, fragile but certain.

I took the envelope out, smoothed it flat, and walked again to the post office. Same stone wall, same brass slots, same streetlight humming overhead. This time I didn’t pause. I slid the letter through the slot and heard it fall. A small sound.

After that, only the hum.