Project: A new era

10 I’D WRITE TO YOU

I’d write you two short lines,
Entwined like all the thoughts inside my head,
Then tuck them like the blankets round the bed,
The empty bed that welcomed me instead.
I’d write you two short lines,
And give you time to savour every word,
Because whenever speaking on the phone,
We talk so much, yet neither one is heard.
I’d write you two short lines,
With pen and paper, as in days of old,
And leave the ink to blur, because those stains
Reveal the feelings words have never told.
I’d write you two short lines,
Perhaps in one quick rush, perhaps thought through,
For you to read again and search between
The things I said and those I hid from you.
I’d write to you.
If I were wise,
I’d write to you.
If I were mad,
And maybe, if I ever lost my head,

I’d write to you.
I’d write to you,
Without attempting to avoid the worst,
Because I’m frightened of being left in the dark,
To keep from dying, or from lying wide awake,
Or simply to fill up this empty page…
I’d write to you.
I’d write you two short lines,
Not carve the words forever into stone,
So they might swell to fill the universe
Or come to rest within one drop alone.
I’d write you two short lines,
Or slightly more, but never overdo;
I would not give you room to pick and choose
What you would keep and what you would refuse.
I’d write to you.
If I were wise,
I’d write to you.
If I were mad,
And maybe, if I ever lost my head,
I’d write to you.
I’d write to you,
Without attempting to avoid the worst,
Because I’m frightened of being left in the dark,
To keep from dying, or from lying wide awake,
Or simply to fill up this empty page…
I’d write to you.
I’d write to you, I’d write to you!
I’d write to you.

There is a letter that is never written. And precisely for that reason, it weighs more heavily.

I’d Write to You exists entirely within the conditional mood: it does not recount an action performed, but the desire to perform it. It is pain in its purest state—the kind that is restrained, the kind that remains unexpressed.

Just two lines: perhaps too few, perhaps decisive. Words entrusted to paper, as they once were, when even a blot of ink could reveal a feeling better than many sentences spoken in haste.

But the letter remains suspended.

To write would mean exposing oneself, leaving a trace, placing something in another person’s hands that could never be taken back. It would mean giving form to absence, to the empty bed, to tangled thoughts, to the fear of darkness. And perhaps for that very reason, the gesture remains imagined, invoked, postponed.

In the most intimate vein of the singer-songwriter tradition, the song captures the fragile moment before a confession: when all the words are already there, ready to emerge, but the hand cannot yet bring itself to write them.

Because silence does not always say less. Sometimes a letter never sent contains everything we lacked the courage to say.