NO PLACE FOR YOU

~JULIAN POV~

Mail came later than usual that day.

The delay unsettled me more than it should have. Time here depended on repetition. When things happened as expected, the day retained its shape. When they didn’t, everything loosened. Breakfast trays. Count. Yard. Mail. Dinner. Sleep. The order mattered because it kept thought from wandering into places it no longer had permission to go.

The men around me noticed it too. A conversation stretched past its natural end before collapsing. Someone paced, stopped, paced again. A laugh surfaced abruptly and went nowhere. I stayed where I was, hands folded, eyes forward. Stillness was easier than anticipation. Stillness demanded nothing of me. When the guard finally entered with the cart, the room corrected itself. Chairs scraped back. Voices dropped. No one looked eager. Everyone watched. Names were called without inflection. Envelopes were handed over. Some were opened immediately, read with practiced detachment. Others disappeared into pockets, saved like currency.

When he said my name, I stood.

The envelope was plain. White. Slightly thicker than the others.

I knew the handwriting before I touched it.

There was no confusion, no moment of doubt. Ava’s writing had always been unmistakable careful without being neat, deliberate without rigidity. The letters leaned forward slightly, as if they were moving before she was fully ready.

I returned to my seat.

I didn’t open it.

I placed the envelope on the table and rested my hands beside it, palms flat, as though proximity alone required restraint. The room continued around me. Someone laughed quietly. A guard murmured near the door. A chair scraped, then went still.

Seeing the envelope was enough.

I hadn’t expected her to write. Not now. Not ever, if I was honest. Silence would have made sense. Silence would have been easier to justify. Silence could be shaped into meaning without resistance. When I finally broke the seal, I did it slowly. Not ceremonially but carefully. I unfolded the paper and held it flat, as if it might resist being read.

I read.

-Julian,

I’ve started this three times.

Each time, I decided it would be easier not to write. That silence would be cleaner. That leaving things where they are would be simpler for both of us. But every time I made that decision, it didn’t settle. It felt unfinished, like something I was deliberately refusing to see.

So this is me not ignoring that.

I don’t know what this letter is supposed to be. I don’t know what I’m allowed to say to you, or what I should leave untouched. I only know that not writing felt dishonest, and I’m trying not to live that way anymore.

I’m in my apartment. It’s late. The light from the street comes in unevenly, and I still haven’t figured out where things belong. I keep meaning to make it feel like mine, but I haven’t. Maybe I’m waiting to feel settled before I let the space reflect me. I don’t know yet.

I want to be clear about something, because clarity feels important even when nothing else does. Writing this doesn’t mean forgiveness. It doesn’t mean understanding. It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being angry, or hurt, or careful.

It means I didn’t want you to become something unreal to me.

I think that’s what scared me most how easy it would have been to turn you into an idea instead of a person. To flatten everything into something manageable. Something that wouldn’t ask anything of me.

I don’t want to do that. Even if it would be easier.

I’m building a life. Slowly. Some days feel stable. Others don’t. I’m learning how to exist without bracing all the time. I don’t know yet what that will look like, but I’m trying to let it be real instead of perfect.

You don’t have to respond. I’m not writing for continuity. I just needed this to exist.

That’s all I can manage right now.

Ava-

I read it again.

Not because it was unclear. Because it wasn’t.

She hadn’t written to soften the past. She hadn’t written to negotiate it. She hadn’t written to absolve or accuse. She had written to refuse my disappearance. That distinction mattered more than I was prepared for. She mentioned her apartment. The uneven light. The way she hadn’t decided where things belonged.

I tried to picture it and failed. Not because the image was vague, but because there was no place for me inside it. No version of that room accounted for my presence not near the window, not on a couch, not listening to the street beside her. The space existed without reference to me at all. That was not distance it was exclusion. She was not waiting. She was not orienting her life around my absence. She was arranging it around herself, around uncertainty that no longer included me as a variable. Something tightened behind my eyes. I lowered my gaze and noticed my hands moving without instruction smoothing the paper, aligning the edges, pressing it flat as if precision could contain what it represented.

For a moment, I considered tearing it.

The thought arrived intact, practical. If I destroyed it now, this moment would collapse into memory, and memory was something I had always known how to control. People became symbols. Events became narratives. Guilt stayed manageable as long as it remained abstract.

The paper felt thin between my fingers.

My throat tightened again this time, barely allowing me to breathe, it wasn’t grief anymore but pure panic. Ava had not written to redeem me. She had not written to punish me. She had written to insist on my reality. Across the room, someone slammed a locker. A guard barked an order. The system moved on, indifferent. No one was watching. There would be no consequence I didn’t assign myself. I placed the letter back on the table and flattened my palms against the surface until the urge passed. My breathing was shallow. Controlled. I hated that I noticed it. I hated more that it mattered.

I told myself I wasn’t thinking about the past. That was technically true. What I was thinking about instead were the pauses in her letter. The sentences she had clearly begun and abandoned. The restraint it must have taken not to explain herself to me.

I had always demanded explanations.

The realization landed sharply. Remorses. The irritation of seeing a habit too clearly, too late. I wondered how many times she had measured her words because I had taught her that carelessness had consequences.

I folded the letter once, then again, careful not to crease it too deeply. The paper felt altered, as though it had already given up something irreversible.

The room continued in its ordinary way. Someone stood. Someone sat. The guards spoke quietly. The structure held. I took a blank request slip and the dull pencil beside it. I stared at the paper longer than necessary. Then I wrote, slowly not a response, not a message. Just an instruction.

Pay attention.

Don’t disappear.

Choose carefully.

I folded the slip and placed it inside the envelope with her letter. Not to send. Just to keep the two things together.

When count was called, I stood with the others. The lights hummed overhead. The walls did not move. Nothing about my sentence changed.

But I understood something then. I had mistaken confinement for punishment. Walls were easy to measure. Time was obedient. What Ava had taken from me was something far less negotiable. She had learned to live without accounting for me. Nothing in her life required my name anymore. That night, back at my bunk, I lay awake longer than usual. I didn’t revisit the past. I didn’t imagine the future. I thought instead about the present about the effort it would require, every day, to remain fully visible without expectation. To exist without being centered. To endure the knowledge that someone had chosen not to let me vanish and had done so without offering me a way back in.

The light continued to buzz.

I let it.