I didn't send that letter

I wrote it when I got home, still wearing my coat. I sat down in the kitchen and filled two pages with hardly a crossing-out, which is rare for me.

It wasn't a love letter, or not only that. It was a way of saying thank you for a conversation that had changed my afternoon. It spoke of a platform, of a delayed train, of how easy it had been to laugh about nothing.

I put it in an envelope and left it in the drawer by the front door. I thought I'd send it the next day. Then I thought it was too much. Then I stopped thinking about it.

Years went by. I moved house twice and the letter came with me, always in the same envelope, a little yellower each time.

One Sunday I found it while looking for something else. I read it standing by the window. I was surprised that it was still true: that afternoon had happened, and it had been a good one.

I don't know whether sending it back then would have made any difference. What I did understand was that keeping it in silence was also a way of denying it a place. So I copied it out, changed two sentences and, for the first time, sent it.

I wasn't expecting a reply. One came, a short one, a few weeks later. All it said was: “I remember the train too.”