Unwritten Love Letters and the Language of Silence

Author’s Note for “Spoken in Ink”

Some poems are not written to be understood by many

only to be true to the one who writes them.

This is one of those poems.

It came from the quiet ache of being misread.

From the sacred labor of choosing words with care,

only to find them brushed aside or heard too shallowly.

But still, I wrote...

because some feelings ask not to be answered,

only to be honored.

This poem is not a cry for recognition.

It is an offering.

A laying down of flowers

in a world that often walks past beauty without seeing it.

To speak in ink is to love without guarantee,

to risk softness in a world that rewards armor.

And yet—what else can a soft heart do?

Bare Your Heart in Ink: A Poem on Intention and Reverence

Spoken in Ink

Sometimes

when I bare my heart upon my sleeve,

it’s like penning love letters

destined never to be read.

---

Each word chosen like a fragile petal,

plucked from a forgotten garden,

held to the light,

checked for the right shade of tenderness

then placed carefully between the silences.

---

But they hear only the words,

never the intention.

---

They know not,

how long I linger on a single phrase,

how I rewrite it in my mind

a dozen times

before letting it leave my lips.

Not out of fear,

but reverence.

---

To them, I am too intense.

But to me,

I am laying flowers at their feet.

---

They couldn’t see the love

hidden in the pauses,

the trembling in the commas.

---

Maybe not all love letters

are meant to be read.

Some are simply meant to be spoken,

even if no one hears them

the way they were meant to be heard.

---

So they walk away,

as if I say nothing at all.

---

And the letters remain unwritten—

the ones I whisper aloud,

meant for someone

who might never understand

that I am always speaking in ink,

even when my voice

is barely a thread.

In the end,
I think I just wanted someone
to hear what I meant
not just what I said.

But no one ever really got me.
Not because I didn’t offer myself,
but because they were never looking in the places
I left myself behind.

—Arllo