"Love Letters I Burned Instead of Sending"

Love Letters I Burned Instead of Sending

By [ FAHAD KHAN ]

There are ashes in a tin box under my bed.

Once, there were letters — all addressed to you, all unsent.

Each one written in the quiet hours when my chest ached more than my pride could contain, when I missed you more than I missed who I used to be before you.

You will never read them.

But I wrote them like you would.

Like you’d open them in the dark of night and see me, finally — raw, unguarded, without the performance of being okay.

I imagined your eyes scanning every line, your lips curling in regret or maybe softness, maybe sadness. I imagined you keeping them, folding the paper gently, like how you used to touch my back when I cried.

But you’re not that person anymore.

Maybe you never were.

The first letter I wrote was three days after you left.

I didn’t date it. I didn’t need to. I remember everything.

The sound of the door clicking shut behind you was louder than the goodbye you didn’t say.

You didn’t even pack everything. A toothbrush, your grey hoodie, a book we started together — left behind like bones of a story we abandoned mid-chapter.

That night, I wrote:

"I hope it rains where you are. Not because I want you cold,

but because I want you to remember how I used to hand you a towel

and say, 'Come here, love. Dry off.'

I hope you remember the warmth, and what it felt like to be wanted so gently."

I folded the letter. Tucked it in a shoebox. Told myself I’d never write another.

I wrote twelve more.

Each one was a kind of exorcism.

Some were forgiving. Some blamed you.

Some blamed me.

Some begged.

There was the letter I wrote on your birthday.

I baked a cake. Chocolate, your favorite. I didn’t eat it. Just stared at it until the frosting cracked and the candles melted sideways.

I didn’t light them.

But in the letter, I did.

“I lit 30 candles and sang your name like a prayer,

even though you weren’t there.

Even though you wouldn’t have come if I called.”

Another was written when I saw your face on someone else’s timeline.

You were smiling. Laughing.

Alive in a world that didn’t include me.

“How strange,

to be erased from a life I memorized.”

I didn’t send them because I knew what I really wanted was impossible.

Not closure. Not even you.

Just the version of you I loved when love still made sense.

The letters weren’t for you, anyway.

They were for the version of me that still waited by the phone.

That still checked old texts for clues, reread your words like gospel.

They were for the girl who didn’t know that love, when it’s right, doesn’t make you beg.

It doesn’t leave you unraveling in silence, trying to piece together reasons from wreckage.

The last letter I wrote was a goodbye.

I don’t remember writing it. Just waking up at 3 AM, sweat on my back, chest heaving. I wrote it in a frenzy, my handwriting slanted, lines uneven. I didn’t fold it. Didn’t reread it.

I burned it with the others.

It was raining that day. Fitting, I thought.

The flames curled the paper inwards, as if the letters were trying to protect themselves. Or trying to cling to one last breath before turning to ash.

And I watched them go.

Watched as every ‘I miss you,’ every ‘why did you leave,’ every ‘please come back’ became smoke in the wind.

It didn’t feel like healing.

It felt like death.

But something about that — the letting go — was beautiful in its own way.

You don’t know any of this.

You don’t know that somewhere in this city, your name was a kind of prayer for months.

You don’t know that the hoodie you left behind still smelled like you until I buried it in the back of my closet.

You don’t know that someone else held me once, and I pulled away because they didn’t hold me like you.

But you also don’t know this:

I stopped writing you letters.

Now I write for myself.

I write poems about thunder and freedom and women who rise after being shattered.

I don’t check your photos anymore.

I no longer search for pieces of you in people who smile like you did.

I still have the tin box under my bed.

Not because I want to remember.

But because it reminds me what I survived.

[Author's Note (optional):]

This story is a reflection of love, grief, and self-healing. If you’ve ever loved someone so deeply it broke you — and then found a way back to yourself — this is for you.