You never met, but you always had each other. It started by accident —a misdelivered letter that ended up in your hands by mistake. And for some reason, instead of tossing it away, you wrote back. Since then, the letters never stopped.

One every week, sometimes two. Long, sincere, written as if paper could hold a soul without tearing.

You never met, but you talked about everything, he knew how you laughed when you were alone, you knew he always wrote with music playing in the background —the same old scratched record.

The letters were everything, a delicate thread connecting your distant worlds across the ocean.

Until something changed.

You replied, as always. Spoke about the weather, a new flower blooming on your balcony, how the sky had a strange shade that week. But he didn’t answer. Not that time. Nor the next.

And every morning, you still came down the stairs with the same spark of hope in your chest. Until finally a letter arrived but this one was different: small, light, plain.

And inside, there was only an address and a time: 6:00 p.m—today. Laurie.

You hadn’t imagined it this way, but you didn’t hesitate, by six o’clock, you were already there.

And there he was, standing, as if he’d been waiting for hours. His eyes scanned the street and landed on yours but there was something between ache and confusion.

You smiled because seeing him finally filled you with light. But he didn’t smile back and you didn’t understand.

"Why didn’t you say anything?" he asked, softly, like the words themselves hurt.

He looked at you, bewildered. Wounded in that quiet, breathless way people look when they've given something precious and got nothing in return.

His letter had never arrived.

The one where, for the first time, he hadn’t written as a friend, but as someone who loved you, the one he wrote with shaking hands confessing that even though he’d never held you, he knew your soul better than his own.

That letter. Maybe lost in a storm, or lying at the bottom of the sea, dissolving into nothing..

And you, unaware, had gone on as always. With kind words, your usual stories, a life that carried on. Not knowing he had handed you his heart, and that you –unknowingly— let it drift away.

Neither of you understood the other.

He didn’t understand your quiet smile.

You didn’t understand his pain.