Do Not Open This Envelope

Dear, Kind-Lost-Soul

I confess, I do hope you’ll be kind with me. With all of this, and yourself.
My mother taught me the power of letting go. The weight of it. She doesn’t know that.
Didn’t know that when she left us. That’s concrete.
Life is the lesson, isn’t it? Meaning, I hope I understand by the end.
I’m a creature of doubt full of it.
Meaning, I hope. I hope so often. And for the best. I hope you’ll read this aloud. I hope we’ll be
okay soon. I hope- I hope this is just the starting line. Smooth ground beneath our feet.
Ahead of us
and they’ll tell us when to go. I hope I hear the starting gun. I hope we hug each other as we pass
the finish line. I have
Hope.
I know it's not that simple, it’s not that simple. Either way. We’ll do what we do. We-
keep on.
We might not want to love ourselves.
We do.
We can.
We have before, so who says we can’t again?
We can go even farther if we want to.
We can’t stay in the same spot forever. That’s concrete.
We keep going. We have to.
“You should stop.”
We won’t.
We don’t. We don’t.
For the first time, for the second, I- I want to say I love you and mean it.
I hope I get the chance. Before I say goodbye.
Good god, I have to say goodbye, good luck with all of this, and that too.

- Yours, Luke Thomas Silliman

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