Just Wanted to Say

I found it scrolling back for something else—

a file, an old address, some scrap of proof—

and there it was: 11:47 PM,

a Tuesday, subject line still holding its truth:

just wanted to say.

I read it like a stranger reads a letter

found folded in a book at a used store,

with the soft detachment of someone

who doesn't have to be accountable anymore.

But it was me. The earnestness was mine.

The run-on sentence and the lowercase i.

The way I said I hoped they were doing well

before I said the thing I meant. That's why

I stayed up past eleven on a Tuesday

in 2009, to press send—

to give the whole thing room to breathe,

to make it kind before the end.

They never wrote back.

I must have known they wouldn't, even then.

But the person typing in the dark

had not yet learned to hedge—

she sent it anyway.

I want to tell her something.

I keep reading it instead.