Leo

The apology that was never offered sits differently now than it did when you first noticed its absence. What felt like a slight has become something closer to information about how this person moves through the world when things go wrong. You can see now that asking for the words would have been asking them to perform a version of themselves they do not actually inhabit. The real gift is not needing those words anymore, not because you have forgiven the original hurt, but because you have stopped expecting them to be someone they have never been.