perhaps

perhaps...

perhaps, one day, you will read this and realise exactly how much satisfaction i have derived from writing this and publishing it when you could not read it. you could not read it and you will not read it until i choose to admit you to this private landscape again. perhaps you will realise, then, what a privilege it is to see these words written in this place, what a gift it was to be admitted to this space way back when i first told you it was here. do you remember? do you remember the secret trade of my innermost thoughts and your sly knowing and how it tingled between us like the kind of secret that starts rumours? do you remember how it fed the inaccurate intimacy of a friendship that was, in the end, no friendship at all but a thinly designed snare into which i fell with all my hopeful affections and trusting words? do you even remember the way these words moved you so you could not hide your care for me? how your care crept into your voice and raised a flush in your face even when you were doing your best to act as casually as you could? how you sometimes said way more than you intended to (and sometimes, i hear, you still do, as if you’re still thinking about me, or about the me you think you know, anyway, the me who is written here in all the discordance of my messy unmade life). perhaps, one day, you will read this and understand what a wrench it has been to me to distance you in this small way, as you have distanced me in larger ways. and perhaps, if you ever read this again, you will understand that my silence has been as ruthlessly eloquent as all of my words ever were.