she wrote a letter for every day your picture hung too low an explanation for all the ones that came before and they sat in silent grief in a shoebox by the bed she never bothered to explain who they were for until the day the last of all those lonely conversations made its way in writing all the way from baltimore and you sat down hard, her paper bleeding in your hands and cried til her ink washed all of your mistakes onto the kitchen floor she wrote a letter but she refused to mail her broken heart for fear that you'd reply "return to sender" so instead she poured it neatly into a little lilac shoebox hoping one day she'd forget and you'd remember
