To a Stranger

Some of the most meaningful moments happen with people whose names you'll never know. The stranger who helped you when no one else did. The one who said something that stuck with you for years. The person on the train whose life briefly intersected with yours, leaving questions you'll never get answered.

Then there are the other kinds of strangers. The ones who wronged you—cut you off, treated you badly, made assumptions. The ones you wronged without meaning to, in moments you still think about. The encounters that were too brief for resolution but too significant to forget.

Writing to strangers is writing to the world at its most random and most human. It's acknowledging that not all meaningful connections come with context or closure. Sometimes you just need to say thank you to someone who'll never hear it, or finally respond to something someone said years ago. Here, those messages have a place to land.