Letter Series, No. 6

It's been a while since I've thought to write. Some part of me feels cut off from receiving signs from you. Either I have not been paying attention or there is something in me that is closed off. My mind seems to drift, rummaging around in some mud-hole somewhere, trying to see what bubbles to the surface. I once thought I had a clear vision of this, but now I just stare out of windows and float, an anxiety balloon, waiting for its branch.

I miss conversing with you. How, when I'd be walking from the library, you'd present yourself in the widening sky. I once wrote that I imagined you reaching for a line, tugging for a boat to be anchored. The image of your sleeve dangling in the water--the silliest things which hold us here, remind us that we still occupy a space. And the line, perhaps I felt it. I cannot say. Or that I do feel it.

To occupy a space. And yours, how one walked by you, watched you enter a room, electricity around you like another god. But subtle, not for worship. Just aware of being alive.

How to tell one body from the next? Passions grow, regardless of topography.

I can't speak of him. You know this. And maybe that's why I've been left with silence. But I can't, I've tried. Something in me springs a trap. Because even now I'm betraying. How moments get fossilized, hardened in their dimensions. Though I can relive them, walk through the dendrite-web and into the occupied space, they refuse to be transcribed. I fear one word-splinter would untangle every association he and I ever had. As though languages have been lost, whole systems unwritten in order to preserve the offering. One moment can grow in the mind, a falling snow.

None of this matters. Your passion is residue, now. Every fear and joy evaporated when your mind unthread, as will mine. And two shared passions are never the same, but shared solitude, which finds, for a moment, another solitude with whom to dance.

You sit, patiently. I should be more like you.