An Unsent Letter
Containing the Blueprint of our Sanctuary
written by: D. Rolland Jr.
Written initially on April 24th at my office, stealthily switching windows whenever someone passed behind me. Edited further on April 28th at Mr. Heads, pencil-scarred and beer-stained. Final version written July 6th at Cartel Coffee—after more time to reflect.
To Ms. [redacted]-
I’d start wearing a seatbelt again if you knew how much I loved you. That’s kind of a stupid way to start a letter, I know. But it’s true-and not stupid in a good way. I’m not talking about the performative, idealized, “I’ll change for you” kind of love. This isn’t a jukebox love. It’s more like… I think I could grow old with our sadness.
That sounds weird, too, doesn’t it? But stay with me. Or stop here, if you need to. Checkpoint One.
I’ve seen the carousel tattooed on your skin, and it made me realize I’ve known you my whole life. Suddenly, I was ten again—back in 2004—staying up too late in quiet rooms, those sacred pre-digital silences. We didn’t know each other yet, but I think we were already listening for each other.
When I say “I’ve known you my whole life,” I mean it made me feel that way, not because I wanted you to save me, I swear to god, but because I know you understood what nobody in my life talks about. Pain…
The pain is heavy, but sometimes it’s also beautiful. It’s brave—to carry it for so long and still remain beautiful. Deep down, I think you know your beauty, even when others don’t. Even when you don’t. And see—this must be the place.
This place, this little house I imagine us living in, is tucked into the rumbling city, near a lively bus stop plastered with some of your provocative stickers, self-printed. Inside, it’s peacefully insulated by books spilling across every surface and half-drunk mugs crowding the tables.
Our photographs line the walls; my commemorative beer cans, your ticket stubs, and our beanie babies sit on the shelves beside that creepy clown jack in the box. Dorothy, or alternatively, Marcel, our cat, perches on the sun-filled windowsill, watching us like a small, silent guardian, as its shadow creeps across the room with each tick of the old analog clock in the living room where the TV would be.
This little house is our Sanctuary.
Today, it smells like coffee, yes, and like watercolors too.
You paint. I write. Silence comforts us, our books and trinkets further insulate the room until that comfortable silence is broken by-
Your Hum, which you do when I concentrate; I tell you not to because it distracts me, but secretly, it helps me focus. You hum anyway, not noticing that soft static from the vinyl needle stuck in a locked groove at the end of our Talking Heads record.
We don’t have to be loud and fill this space with noise. We just have to be real. Like the kind of real that doesn’t ask for anything in return. The silence will break, eventually- a laugh, a sob, a slamming door, a snore. But there will always be another room to retreat to, and another to explore. Explore together. Explore alone.
There will be a room for your dark mood days, a place where you can be alone but still with me-where you don’t have to explain how you feel, and I don’t try to fix you because I already know. I’ll see it. You’ll feel seen but not naked. And quietly, I’ll give you what you need.
That static from the record player still hums in the distance. It’s been playing for a while, but we are too comfortable to notice. Comfortable together. Comfortable in silence. This must be the place.
Checkpoint two. Stop here if you need to.
There will be a room for a little one to look up at the stars painted on the ceiling, nodding off to sleep as the photographs and drawings, accompanied by my custom playlists around their crib, rock them into dreams. I often imagine our beloved child:
Another quiet one, with big thoughts and even bigger eyes.
We name him Samsa because he’s tender with a heart full of rooms, even if the world tries to turn him into something strange. The name means “oneself” in Czech. He’d rule libraries, coffee shops, and dive bars with a quiet but confident harmony that helps strangers believe in gentleness again.
Or maybe we name her Phoebe, because she will be brought into a world spinning on a carousel, she will always be spinning-after we are gone-spinning from the past to the present, no matter how harsh the future gets, she will always be able to spin back to a place where she knows she is loved before facing the present again.
We give our child a new last name. Not [redacted]. Not Rolland.
Something honest. Something clean.
Because we wanted to tell the world: You’re not defined by your history, kid. You define it.
There will be days when we must return to the world of machines-take up again our duties, yes, even the seemingly soul-killing ones however, the protective forces of our sanctuary, will always hold onto that moment for us and return to it.
Shedding and cleaning the stress of our days, like a holy doormat of sorts. The Sanctuary brings us back to that comfortable silence where the record player static still hisses and the soft cry of baby Phoebe waking from her nap prompts one of us to say “I got this” with genuine excitement.
And if the ever-growing dark world ever tries to find our sanctuary, it will only find walls and picture frames full of love—light so pure it makes the darkness recoil.
And if the world tries to take the sanctuary away from us, it will only take away the bricks & plywood.
Because a house is just bricks, a home is a place in our hearts, and a home- a real home is that sanctuary.
This is the final checkpoint. You don’t have to keep going. This is not a “there is no turning back” warning. Nothing dramatic like that. Just a gentle invitation with a reminder of the emotional stakes it may take to read it and truly understand it.
You’ll probably never read this. I know.
And you’ll probably never know what I carry around.
And if that means someone else shares your bed at night, and you paint alone during the day while baseball murmurs from the other room where he sits, I’ll make peace with that.
I already have, sort of.
Maybe not all the way. I wish it were that simple.
But I’ve made peace close enough to nod and mean it.
The signs of this sanctuary, real or imagined, will always surround us.
In places nobody looks-the smudge your finger made in the pictures you took of me, or behind the old notes in my worn notebooks from the many bus rides- you’re here.
And sheathed inside your canisters of undeveloped film, behind the sadness that prompted you to paint the pictures that sit on your fridge – I’m there.
And I think that’s something sacred.
Even if it’s a secret.
Even if it’s just me and the stars and the beloved child I hold in my heart, thinking about you.
Or it’s just you and another warm body, love drunk or just drunk, at night in bed. And maybe while they’re snoring, you look up at the stars painted on your ceiling and think of baby Samsa or Phoebe.
But I must tell you this-this love has not made me bitter.
It has not made me weak and not kept me in melancholy.
If anything, it has made me aware.
Aware of pain, of beauty, of the strange dignity of longing found in between.
I don’t want anything from you, not your affection, and not your guilt. Not anything. You’ve already given me everything, even if there are greater things we could build together.
I have this letter, written only to myself, as proof something gentle still survives in me.
A man who has wrestled with meaninglessness to have found meaning in the act of loving itself, regardless of outcome.
There lives a place. A sanctuary.
Where you and I are real.
Where we walk the halls of a home that remembers everything.
This blueprint proves that even if our sanctuary never touches soil, I believe it exists outside of time.
It is not about outcomes.
It’s about defiance against meaninglessness.
About love—real love—without illusion, surviving still.
And when I die, I will carry that place into the void.
And the void will be less terrifying.
Anyways that’s all.
If you ever feel something bloom in your chest when a certain song plays, or you laugh at the wrong moment, or you suddenly feel seen in something you made—
Maybe that’s just me.
Loving, laughing, and lounging with you
from far away.
Quietly. Forever.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Redactions made out of respect for Ms. [redacted]’s existing relationship.
- An Unsent Letter - November 27, 2025
