Three Months Behind

The envelope came to an address

I haven't lived at in five years.

The postmark was from June.

It's December now.

Inside was his handwriting—

the kind that got shakier toward the end,

each letter fighting the page.

He wanted to tell me something,

something he didn't want to wait to say,

so he wrote it down

in the careful way of someone

who knows they might not get another chance.

I opened it three months after he didn't.

The letter says he wanted me to know

about a choice he made when he was young,

about a thing he'd kept quiet,

about how it had shaped him.

He wanted me to understand him

before the understanding was impossible.

But it was impossible.

I read his words like a stranger reads them,

without the chance to ask,

without the voice to argue back,

without the months he'd given me

to prepare for this.

I'm reading the thing he tried to give me.

I'm reading it alone.