Between the Folded Pages

Letter 8: November 20, 1983 – From William to Elise

Elise,

I am sitting at my desk, your letter open before me, the words seared into my mind, each one a wound I cannot seem to stop tracing with my thoughts. You said it was your last letter, but I cannot, will not, let it be the last.

I have read it more times than I can count, the edges of the paper softening under my touch, the ink bleeding into my fingertips as if your words are trying to mark me, to become a part of me. And they have, Elise. Your words have settled in my chest like stones, making it difficult to breathe, to think, to do anything but feel the weight of what I have done.

You say I have lost you.

But how can I lose what has never truly been mine to hold?

You accuse me of choosing London, of choosing a life without you, but do you not see, Elise? I chose this because I thought it was the only way to save us. I thought—I hoped—that by keeping this distance, by staying here and letting you stay there, we could preserve the beauty of what we are, what we were. That we could remain unbroken.

But I see now how wrong I was.

I thought I was protecting us from the mundanity that kills love. The mornings filled with unspoken irritations, the nights weighed down by exhaustion. I feared that if I came to you, if we tried to build a life together, we would lose the magic of this—of letters written in the quiet hours, of longing that sharpens every thought, every memory.

I feared that our love would become ordinary.

But, Elise, I did not realize that my fear would destroy us just the same.

I must tell you something now that I should have told you long ago. Something I have buried so deep inside me that I thought I could forget it, ignore it, pretend it did not exist. But your words—your final words—have unearthed it.

Do you remember the first time I kissed you? On that bridge in Oxford, beneath the lanterns that cast their trembling light onto the river? I had loved you for months by then, but I had kept it to myself, terrified that if I spoke the words aloud, I might shatter whatever fragile connection we had.

What you do not know is this: that night, when you turned to me and smiled, when your lips parted to speak, I was already holding a letter in my pocket. A letter I had written to you days before, one that said everything I could not seem to say out loud. It was simple, really. Just three words written over and over again: I love you. I love you. I love you.

I was going to give it to you that night. But when you smiled, when you reached for my hand, I panicked. I thought, This is enough. This moment is enough. So I slipped the letter into the river instead. I watched it disappear into the darkness, the ink bleeding into the current, and I told myself it did not matter.

But it does, Elise. It matters because I have been throwing my love away ever since.

You told me I will wake one day and reach for you, only to find the cold space where you once were. Elise, I do not need to wait for that day. I feel it now, in every second, in every breath. Your absence is not something I will discover in the future—it is a shadow that haunts me already.

I cannot bear the thought of you walking through Paris, carrying the weight of my failure. I cannot bear the thought of you looking out over the Seine and feeling only emptiness where once there was joy. I cannot bear the thought of you becoming someone I can only know through the lines of a painting, a woman rendered in strokes of blue and gold, forever out of reach.

But more than that, Elise, I cannot bear the thought of a life where I do not even try to make this right.

I am coming to Paris.

I do not know if you will want to see me. I do not know if I deserve to see you. But I will be there, standing on the bridge where you once stood with me, reciting poems beneath the stars.

If you still care for me, even a little, meet me there.

If you do not, I will leave. I will return to London and carry the weight of your absence for the rest of my life.

But please, Elise, do not let this be the end.

Yours always,

William