To the friend I stopped calling:
You called on a Tuesday. I was in the middle of something. That was never true. I just did not want to hold the phone and be a person.
I said I would call back.
I did not, that week. Then not that month. Then it got long enough that calling back meant explaining the whole silence, and I did not have a reason, so I let it get longer. That is how it works. There is never a reason, and the not-reason becomes the reason.
I still take the long way home past your old street. Not to see you. The turn is automatic. My hands still know it.
I have typed the first line maybe forty times. "Hey, it has been a while." I delete it every time, because "a while" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Here is the real one: I was a bad friend, not a busy one. You would have forgiven busy.
Anyway. This is the version I sent to nobody.